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Context

I’m trying to learn to ride off road, and I’m going to catalog every time I drop my bike for reflection purposes.

3-10-26

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Tried to avoid some big puddles and went off to the side of the trail. Ended up getting stuck. Tried to initially maneuver the bike alongside it relatively unsuccessfully. Was concerned that I was digging myself in. Tried to pop into neutral and back out also unsuccessfully. At some point during this wresling match I dropped the bike making the situation worse. I was growing tired and at this point I decided to take jacket and helmet off.

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Picking up the bike in the slushy mud was incredibly difficult, exerted all my energy and slipped and the bike came back down. Had to go sit by a creek to recover and try again. Finally got some good footing, got it upright and decided to try harder to unstuck myself. Sat on the bike and tried rocking forward and back, also tried turning traction control off. Ultimately some combination of trying to become one with the machine more significantly is what ended up working. I rocked back and forth aggressively, let the rear tire spin and get me out. I tried both bouncing up and down (increasing weight on the rear tire) as well as trying to rock forward and back with the clutch. Some combination here worked. The sort of thing that makes you wonder, am I actually stuck? Also I always forget to air down, my gosh how many times I have struggled and have not attempted to air down.

Some hardware reflections:

  • lack of adjustable kickstand is pretty problematic, this is too tall and it was a pain to put down nearly almost dropped it on the other side. A bigger foot would always be nice, but not sure it’s needed, this is pretty much worst case scenario for kickstand and it was fine, except for being too long, since the bike is slightly lower.
  • Obviously knobie tires would be great, but this vehicle is in an evaluation stage right now, I have a dirt bike for things like this. I’m trying to understand if I have sufficient skill and I move slowly enough through things like this can I get away with street biased tires so I can continue to enjoy highway things and twisties. But perhaps I don’t need a 90/10 tire for that, maybe a 70/30 tire would suffice. Maybe there’s just a strictly better tire out there.
  • I think the move as soon as bad things start to happen is to turn the bike off. The fact that this means that TC & ABS is reset is such a bummer (can be addressed)
  • I think a small block and tackle would have been a nice problem solving tool to have in the mix
  • Snacks would have been nice to have in the mix, I had water thankfully but some jerky would go a long way here.
  • I would have traded carying more weight for the bike to be easier to pickup. It really sunk in there, was angled downhill, kinda worst case scenario. I wonder how much crash protection would change the angle.

Some skill issues:

  • if I could put my foot down and do that fancy turn, or even do it off the bike I wouldn’t have been in this situation. The conditions were ideal for that sort of turn.
  • perhaps even a kickstand style turn would have been better if a hard surface could be found. Certainly worth practicing anyways.
  • perhaps the center of the trail is more reliably compacted then the random sides I ended up in. My wheels sunk in and water pooled in pretty quickly.
  • don’t take gloves off, no matter how messy it’s getting, hands getting torn up is not worth the traction. rinse off full gloves if needed, keeping hands clean also valuable.

3-8-26

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Practicing in front yard, there was a little ditch I suppose, about the depth of the tire. I approached on a 45 and I think I lost the front. I think if I had treated this as an obstacle to loft my front over perhaps I would have been fine. Alternatively approaching head on would perhaps also be okay. I think as always if I had knobbies i would have also been okay. But generally the fronts are pretty good at gripping it’s the rear I have problems with and I don’t think that was relavent here. There’s also a feeling I have of not really taking the obstacle seriously, I was probably sitting and not even expecting this to be an issue. The ground was way softer that morning and this fall happened before I realized that would be the case. I think also not only did I approach it at a 45 but I was likely mid turn as well, so the wheels weren’t pointed in the same direction, perhaps increasing the chances the front washes out.

It was pretty difficult to pickup the bike from this position. There’s always a moment you have to really lock in and get ready to exert a lot of effort. It’s not something you can casually do. Especially when things sink into the ground.

3-02-26

Stalled while trying to maneuver around potholed brooklyn and dropped the bike on the side of the road. Was able to pick up pretty trivially and get on with it. Mostly socially embarrasing. Probably first stall since owning bike. Probably the drop I want to talk about the least. No reason to be dropping bikes on paved surfaces.

2-28-26

Tried to tackle rutted, snowy, double track near rutgers. Wasn’t yet comfortable with wheels doing different things. Probably panicked and dropped the bike. Since then I’ve grown much more confident to the back sliding around and powering through things. I ended up dropping the bike on both sides on this instance and also damaging the coolant overflow reservoir. Making me again, seriously consider crash protection. But I think it could have been prior owner things as well.

The bike was pleasantly easy to pick up for some reason both times, perhaps because of the angle and not sinking into the earth.