Here is the thing: A motorcycle, when you stop balancing it, tips over. It isn’t necessary to cite any kind of scientific evidence to support this fact. Any six year old kid with a bicycle can tell you. The bike in question can be going 3 miles an hour or 130 miles per hour–same result. Interrupt the balance significantly, and what was once vertical becomes suddenly, and irreversibly, horizontal.

I did a remarkable thing last week. After years of dealing with a virtual legion of poor bastards who’d been run over, run into, fallen off, wheelied-over, hit animals of every possible genus and species, plowed into debris (drywall pails, tile cutters, hazard barriers), and a fair number who simply tipped over at traffic lights, mailboxes or gasoline pumps, I managed to throw a perfectly good 1000 cc Suzuki the length of a parking lot, with my entire staff standing at attention bearing witness. I haven’t fallen off a bike in this manner in longer than most of these people have been alive.

How, you might ask, could I possibly be so stupid? Why, you wonder, would I do such a thing?
Um…damned if I know. I can come up with all sorts of reasons, but in the end, I succumbed to gravity. Running late for work, I flew the bike in low and fast across a freshly seal-coated parking lot, through a puddle, grabbed a handful of brakes, tucked the front end and threw the bike about thirty feet. With 6 people–2 mechanics, a salesman, a receptionist, service writer, and the parts manager–waiting patiently for me to get there and unlock the shop, there to watch every ego crunching second of it. What a jackass, I am thinking. The damage to plastic and metal was insignificant when compared to my battered self image. I pushed the bike around the back of the building, parked it, and ordered the replacement parts. And then I spent the next week being pissed off at myself.

…until this morning, when I had the opportunity to take a call from a young lady–a new rider–who bought a new GSXR750 from us a month or so ago. I had to pry every little detail out of her, one at a time, but finally it became apparent that she had crashed her new bike. It turns out that it had taken her a whole week to even call us, so deep was her shame. “Were you hurt?” I asked her. No, she wasn’t. “Great” I said, “Bring it down here immediately and make sure you see me when you get here.” And she did. And when she did, still professing her feelings of inadequacy and ignorance, I led her by the hand out back to my brand new, scratched and bent motorcycle, and invited her to laugh with me at the result of all my experience and ability. Gravity will get us all, sooner or later.