Not a scratch.
Cory crashed his bike while coming around a corner in the rain...
As below, is his accounting of the crash:
Cory:
It poured all morning. We were about 150km south of the border, Tim in front, then me and Petar in the back. I came around a slight left hand turn and the rear tire broke loose and the bike and I hit pavement at 80km per hour or so. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to think. One minute I was singing along with Lily Allen in my helmet and the next I was sliding down the road on my left side. All I remember thinking was keep your feet in front of you. I slid to stop in the ditch and my bike slid about 10ft in front me before hitting the ditch, catching an edge and flipping in the air, landing upside down.
I got up off the road (feeling pretty good actually) and walked over to shut my still running bike off (got to love fuel injection). Petar ran over to see if I was OK, I was. By this time Tim realized that we weren't behind him and he turned around. I think it as worse for him having no idea what was happening but seeing a bike upside down in the ditch. He came running over asking if I was OK. I said yeah, get the video camera!
The bike was in pretty rough shape. Both fairings are cracked, both mirrors are broken off, headlight assembly, gauge cluster, front header bracket all smashed. The worst part is that our last working bike video camera was destroyed :(. It was recording when I crashed but was on loop mode and I wasn't able to tag the loop before it got recorded over (1 min loop time). So close to video of a great crash but not close enough.
We straightened out the handle bars and levers. The Bark-Buster hand guards and the Tourtech-crash bars with the homemade extensions all did their jobs. Pretty minimal damage considering the crash. My body armour-pressure suit did its job too. I slid on my elbow and forearm for about 80ft on the pavement and have no damage (to me). My rain pants and jacket are not looking so good though! That's how slippery the road was, 80ft slide and a 2 inch hole in rain jacket sleeve. Knobby tires and wet pavement, not a good combo!
Yes Mother, I swear I'm fine!
After adjusting a few things I was able to fire the bike up and we rode to Ulan Baatar (about 150km from crash). It rained hard 90% of the way. I was soaked. Petar had a friend of a friend that helped him with his Visas so Petar wanted to stay in her hostel while we were in UB. We had a crude map (UB has a population of one million). We were on the main street through the city but were detoured due to construction. A several block stretch of the main drag was blocked off with concrete blocks for major road construction. We drove a round for what seemed like hours trying to find this hostel. We stopped to ask a woman where we were on the map and where the hostel was a kid in a Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap walked over and started asking me about my bike in broken English. I couple of his friends soon appeared and also seemed to be very interested in the bike. I was getting a bad vibe from the whole situation. I turned around and saw that a punk had one of my bags unzipped and was trying to get my SPOT GPS tracker out of the case. I smashed his hand with my fist and gave him shove and yelled to Tim and Petar that we were leaving RIGHT NOW!
We managed to find an English speaking Mongolian who told us the hostel we needed was only accessible via the main rode that was blocked off. He took us to place where we could see the place but weren't able to get too it due to road blocks and trenches. Time for a little urban offroading with our big fat enduro bikes! Weaving through parking lots, down side walks, up a couple stairs, over some curbs and there we were...on the street that was blocked off but still 150ft from our ultimate goal. A few more curbs alleys, private driveways, across a few playgrounds and the gauntlet was complete! There we were at the hostel entrance.
There were 2 Aussies (mother, daughter) out front. We talked to them for a bit and then to the hostel operator. They own 2 hostels a couple blocks apart. The one we were at had Internet and secure parking for the bikes (the most important thing). Unfortunately they had no more room. The second hostel had room but no Internet or secure parking (and since there are Leafs fans in UB we know secure parking is required). We worked out a deal that our bikes could stay at location one and we would stay at location 2. Zoe and her mom (the Aussies) offered to help us carry our things to the location 2 (couple blocks). Clean room, hot water, a dry bed and the bikes securely locked up. Perfect.
When we were in South Korea Tim misplaced his passport and thought he had dropped it in the airport terminal (we were just outside the terminal doors). He went back to look for it and Petar, Michelle and I were double checking his carry on luggage to make sure it wasn't in a pocket somewhere. I checked his laptop bag and came across an envelope that was addressed to Mr. Cranky Pants.
I asked Tim about it and he basically told me to never mind....hmm OK. Once we got the hostel tonight he handed me the envelope. It was from Becky. It was a talking card and in a cartoony voice it said I miss you. Definite a nice pick me up on a cold wet day. Many times while riding in this rain Ive thought I would rather be sitting on Becky's couch playing Tetris (don't ask)!
Tim: I'd been carrying the card from Becky around for a month, and I figured if you crash your bike at 80k in the rain, you deserve a nice gift.
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