Day 11: Man Down!

We broke camp on Sunday morning and left Eureka, continuing down the coast. The roads and weather continued to be great and we were making good time towards San Francisco.

In the afternoon, about 130mi north of San Francisco, we were riding down Hwy 1 when I went down. I was taking the turn a little wide, and right at the outside edge of the lane my front tire lost traction on some dirt and gravel from the road. This caused me to slide off the road where unfortunately there was no shoulder. My bike went into some thick grass and soft dirt which really bogged the bike down. The bars were going left and right to full lock and I was barely able to keep the bike upright when it threw me off, still going what must have been 30-40mph. The next think I know I'm rolling and sliding along the pavement. I don't know exactly how, but both my bike and I ended up back on the road next to each other.

I made it through with barely a scratch, just a couple of small bruises. My helmet and jacket showed signs of taking the brunt of the impact. My bike, however, had a severely bent fork tube and my trunk had broken off and cracked open. Most of the rest of my luggage was okay, and actually did a pretty good job of protecting the rear of my bike. We hauled my bike upright and the front wheel was tweaked so badly that it was only pointing straight ahead when my handlebars fully to the right. Among the other damage, the windscreen, the shifter foot lever, and the left foot peg had sheared off.

A couple in a pickup stopped and helped us gather up the loose pieces. We asked if there was a motorcycle shop nearby and to our amazement the only one within a couple of hours was in the next town of only 500 people. The ride in was interesting with the missing foot peg and having to fool around with the broken shift lever. The inability to turn the front wheel to the right was a little concerning at first, but luckily most of the turning of a motorcycle is done with the leaning motion at any reasonable speed. I managed to tackle the curvy road all the way into town up to the motorcycle shop.

It was Sunday and the shop was closed, but someone managed to get a message to the owner and he came in to take a look. The damage was pretty bad and he said the tube was bent too much to bend back and would need to be replaced. He said he'd come in the next morning (Memorial Day) and tear the bike apart to check everything out and see what needed to be done to get me back on the road.

While we were standing outside the motorcycle shop trying to figure out what we were going to do, a couple came by on their motorcycles. They offered to help in any way they could, and ended up putting us up for the night in their beach house. There wasn't anything else we could do that day, so we called it a night.