Lowside for me. :/

[njchopper87]

So, I learned a lesson today.. well two if you want to get technical. And no, I'm not hurt at all. No pics because it was dark by the time I got back.. maybe later.

The first lesson.. approaching an intersection with a red light I noticed Person A's car stalled to the left of me in a right turn only lane (turning in the direction I was coming from). Well that sucks for them. Meanwhile Person B and Person C start getting impatient and honk (they have a green). With Person B and C ignoring the hand signs to go around, Person A starts panicking. Light turns green (for me). Truck in front of me proceeds to turn, Person A's car starts while I start to turn, Person A's car goes straight instead of turning in the right turn only lane.. they braked, but a near miss none the less.

The mistake I made is I assumed a stalled car was not a threat, when in reality it was in the red zone. If the above was confusing I'm sorry.

Here's the shitty part.. Going down the street I made the turn onto, I came up to the usual poorly designed turn that I dread every day (the sidewalk jets out too far and generally becomes part of the road, along with it being a sharp turn to begin with). But, there was something else wrong with that turn today.. there was something shiny and dark on the surface.. oil, perhaps?

I judged that it was out of my turning path (there are two lanes to turn into), but I slowed down a bit anyway and tried to turn a bit more closer to the curb (or lack thereof). Well, I was correct.. in part. What I didn't take into account is that oil (or whatever it was I saw) is a liquid, and thus spreads outward getting thinner as it goes along. So the area that looked unaffected was actually slippery as fuck. In short, I began turning and low sided.

After I got the bike up and onto the sidewalk about three or more cars all proceeded to slide on the slick surface in about a 5 minute time frame. Some nice people that saw what happened came over to make sure I was all right and that was that.

Because I was going slow I myself was not injured besides a scratch on my arm (I'm thinking that's from the armor in the elbow region of my jacket) and minor wrist pain that went away after about 15 mins into class. My jeans now have a nice black streak on them, but my jacket is perfectly in tact thanks to whatever that slippery shit was.

Bike wise the bottom part of one pipe is scuffed up, the bottom of the brake pedal area is scratched a bit, and I lost a little thingy off the bottom of my foot pedal. Nothing very visible, and after I get the cash I was going to get new pipes anyway. The bike also took a minute to get started again though, but have not had any issues after that.

I'm still not sure where exactly I slid out though. There might have been some liquid before the area I saw that appeared invisible. Like a leak starting, then spilling everything in the area I saw, and then dripping some after the area. Or it may have started to ooze down to the sides of the road into the area I thought was safe. Maybe even a combination of the two.

At any rate, I learned that even if it appears liquid on the street surface is centered around one area I should assume the ENTIRE surface is a danger area even going backward and forward a bit. Until I know that the area is cleaned up I'm avoiding it for sure though.. always hated it to begin with.