The Situation
I had a friend in town over the Labor Day weekend. I met her about two years ago at a party for the the local sportbike group here in Colorado and last year she decided to move to Hawai'i for whatever reason (I think to follow a guy she met while on vacation there) and this was her first trip back to Colorado since she left.
Before she even came back to the continent she sent out a Facebook event notification stating she wanted to go on a ride while she was in town. When she moved to Hawai'i she sold her GSXR-600 as well as nearly every other item she owned and therefore didn't have anything to ride while she was in the island state. Luckily, another friend had bought a R1 and had a GSXR-750 sitting in the garage for her to use. Fair enough.
The Event
So, we met on Sunday morning in the nearly 50 degree-f weather at a local meeting point for our ride. If history was any indication I didn't need to worry so hard about arriving on time and history was right: about half the people showed up to the staging place nearly a half hour late. That was an unfortunate bit of serendipity as it allowed the weather to get a little warmer, however it did place the day's schedule perilously close to going past it's 9a-noon time frame. Not that we ride on a schedule, mind you, but the ride was set to be over at noon and a lot of us had other plans for the rest of the day including barbecues, the
Taste of Colorado and other cultural events.
Anywho, we finally started our ride. Again, the same as the last couple of weeks, I found myself riding with people I wasn't accustomed to riding with. Sure, there were the usual suspects, but then there were another 5 or 6 people I've never seen on a motorcycle.
The Players
A couple of the guys, Matty and Isaac, were people I'd met just earlier that weekend. Both joked that I'd never be able to keep up with them, that they were great riders. Matty rides a ZX6R (636) and Isaac (to my amazement) rode a blue 2004 SV1000s. It was nearly stock and from what I understood Isaac had only acquired it a month or two earlier.
We took off. My friend Jim was the lead person riding an
Aprillia and Randall rode as the sweeper on his
Blackbird. I was somewhere in the middle. Both of the other guys are good riders, Jim a racer and Randall just very experienced: responsible for themselves and the group and I didn't have to think twice about them. Some of the other riders weren't so strong or I haven't ridden with them enough to know their skill level and had to make my assumptions based on who I know who have ridden with them in the past.
The beginning of the ride wasn't too bad -- we hit the canyons outside of the metro area, heading southwest. Unfortunately, because we did start so late we also ran into a lot more cager traffic than we normally would have had out kickstands up time been met. A couple of the riders, Matty and Isaac, weren't content to ride in a group at the speeds we were travelling and they spent an inordinate amount of time looking over their shoulders as though they were trying to keep an eye on someone in the rear of the group although we had a sweeper who fulfills that duty. Between speeding up on the lead and zig-zagging in and out of our group they were trying to keep an eye on one of the riders in the rear of the line, presumably Amber, another rider. In short, they weren't really being safe or responsible riders.
We turned onto a much loved and very dangerous road that takes the lives of riders every year, most recently a fellow sportbike rider in June that resulted in our Memorial Ride a couple of weeks ago. As soon as we left the more traveled portion of this road the two riders, Matty and Isaac, started again with their zig-zagging, illegal passing in double-yellow zones and riding to the front of the group then slowing down and speeding up again. You have to understand, this is a two-lane road with cliffs on one side and drops on the other with an average posted speed-limit of 35mph. As a group we were going considerably faster than the posted 35mph and these guys were going much faster than the rest of us while riding (in my opinion) irresponsibly.
As we hit a series of blind turns Isaac and Matty decided to pass the lead rider, Jim. Normally when we ride this is a big no-no that will not get you invited on more group rides. The lead is the lead and serves a function; some of those functions are to set the pace and to scout out the road ahead marking items that might pose a danger to the group. After Matty and Isaac passed Jim everything gets hazy.
The Crisis
By this time I am the third person in the group: Jim, (another) Matty (on a Ducati) and myself, then Christie (on a ZX10r), Wayne (on a SV650s), Kristina (on a borrowed GSXR750), Amber (on a blue R6, I think, (some other guy (on a custom chopper believe it or not), Becky (on a R1) and finally our sweeper, Randall. Jim, (the other) Matty and I come around this blind turn to see a white Chevy pickup parked in a left turn pullout and a motorcycle on the ground lodged up under a guard rail. We pull over as soon as we can and run back to the truck. Isaac's bike was down, Isaac himself was walking around while Matty was trying to pull the bike out from under the guard rail. By this time the rest of the group had caught up and parked their bikes.
What did I mean by hazy? Well, the stories get different. Isaac and Matty were riding like ass-hats trying to show off or something. They were going faster than the group, zig-zagging, weaving, and passing illegally. Jim, the lead rider thought he saw Isaac try to pass a car on the left, over a double-yellow in a blind turn resulting in him laying the bike down after he presumably lost control. Isaac didn't really say much, but Matty blamed the truck for being parked in a lane Isaac shouldn't have been in in the first place. From what Matty said: Isaac took the inside line, crossing the double-yellow and came out wide and thus laid out the bike trying to avoid the truck that was suddenly in front of him.
But would Isaac have been in that situation if he had been riding with the rest of us instead of like a hooligan?
At this point, Isaac decided to ride the totaled SV1000s home with Amber, the guy on the chopper and Christie as his chaperons since the bike did not have a front headlight nor front brakes. Randall and (Ducati) Matty decided to call it a day and Wayne decided to leave since , as we were headed, he wasn't going to get home as early as he'd hoped. This left Becky, Kristina, Matty and myself.
Even though his friend had just gone down Matty still rode like an ass-hat leaving the rest of us beyond the rearview mirror, Becky was a lot slower and she admitted she was a bit shaken up and even though there were four of us, we still had a hard time keeping the group together. This annoyed me. If you're going to ride with a group you need to maintain the integrity of the group. It's that simple. It's something Harley riders are good at doing (but, we have to admit, they can't go fast enough to lose each other) and it's something the people I usually ride with strive to maintain as well.
I should note: Matty did keep an eye on his rearview, slowing down and stopping when Becky or Amber fell too far behind; however, he still sped up and left anyone who couldn't keep up, long behind him.
The Lesson
When I ride with hot-doggers like Matty and Isaac, or the people I rode to
Telluride with (who left a new-to-riding female about 20 miles behind them riding by herself) I start to re-evaluate and reconsider some of the people I have been riding with recently. At times like these reconsidering seems like a good policy. However, I am in a conundrum. As a military veteran I was always taught to lead by example. It is hard to lead by and set a good example when you aren't in the same place as those needing the guidance. That's something I'm going to have to consider while I re-evaluate who I will ride with in the future.
Addendum: for some reason this doesn't read well to me, but I can't seem to think of a another way to write it. What do you think?
