I've been trying to find the time to post this for a couple of weeks, so now that I have a few minutes, here goes.
On Friday, Jan 18th, I had just saddled up and pulling out of my usual parking spot at work. There is a new power plant being built across the street from my office here at Stanford University. For most of the day that day, they were running a street sweeper and wetting down the road the keep the dust under control. The California Clean Air Act requires they do this. The unfortunate side effect was an unexpected very slippery condition due to the combination of mud and water.
When I pulled out, I accelerated very lightly, because I knew it might be slick; but the bike still came out from under me almost immediately. I was only going about 5 mph, so the result was a short slide and me thrown off onto my back with helmet hitting the asphalt pretty hard. The outcome for my head would have been much different had I not been wearing one.
I took the bike to Jim at Metal Dragon and the damage is almost two grand. The crash bars, driver floorboard, lower faring and crankcase cover were all scratched or damaged. I'm pretty fortunate, because the University Loss Prevention office is going to have the contractor reimburse GEICO and me for whatever it takes to replace the damaged items.
The thing that really gets me in all of this is how quickly it happened. No warning. After I went down, I ran my foot over the road and found it to be slicker than all get out. I'm posting this so hopefully, this won't happen to someone else, should they find themselves in a similar situation. The problem lays in the fact they were not removing the dirt, just swishing it around and creating a safety hazard in the process. With a little suction on the vacuums, they would have also removed the dirt and mud from the road. The following Monday, the road was clean after the same process. So somehow word got out, before I had a chance to report it to the Project Manager. A couple of the road crew were standing about 200 feet down the road and saw it happen, so I guess they reported it.
Here are a few pictures
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Topic: Minor incident and injuries 01-18-2013 (Read 8570 times)