One further comment about your comment.

Chance plays a part and you make reference to bad things can happen on sunny days and on snowy/slushy days.

But Chance also plays a part with good things happening also. It’s an equal opportunity scatterer of chances – good and bad.

I look at it in the way I was originally indoctrinated to the word “gift” … something which is given with no strings attached. It’s up to you / me to recognize it, and to either pick it up or not.

Tim

And even though for me it was the wrong decision to ride it was a good experience, a challenge, and I felt good to have been able to manage it. I feel as if I am a smarter rider now even if that means I won’t do it again.

Anonymous (CC) raises some important ideas I didn’t consider—not just the danger to myself but the danger I posed to other drivers by being on the road as a very slow moving object. Without talking to a police officer it is hard to know if I still have the priveledge to be on the road in those conditions or if I present myself as a hazard.

As I think about this I have to agree that as drivers scramble to keep moving and take chances passing me in places they shouldn’t I could possibly cause an accident. Ragardless of whether I am within my rights on the road I would hate feel responsible for that. And even though I routinely pulled over to let people by there was always someone waiting to go.

SimplyTim got me thinking about chance. Bad things can happen on a dry sunny day but the chances of bad things happening on a snowing day are worse. No way around that. The risk factor was heavily overloaded for me and while I managed it this time odds are that eventually I will meet a mishap—my own or anothers.

I tried hard to consider the pride aspect of the ride and if I was pushing the envelop for reasons of ego or just to have something to write here. The answer to that one is no. I was on the road for no other reason that bad judgement. A lack of careful attention to the weather and despite mounting a snow covered scooter I held to the irrational belief that things were going to get better rather than worse. I’ve seen it before when driving home but I wasn’t driving, I was riding. Just a bad decision.

Last, I want to thank the anonymous poster for the reminder of what this ride could do to my family. Especially this ride.

My feeling about all of this is that it was wrong for me to ride home in these conditions. I should have left the scooter parked. Once on the road I should have parked it in any number of places on the way home and while I did manage this trip sucessfully it was too big a risk for me to take especially in end of the day traffic. And it wasn’t as if I was riding on a trip and got caught in a storm and needed to make my way to shelter.

Just a bad decision that I need to put in the lesson learned category.

Warm weather is here now and I suspect I won’t see much if any snow now. Make sure when next winter arrives that you all remind me of this ride and your comments.

No more snow storm riding for me.

My concluscion: A right fine post using extreme riding conditions to illustrate dilemmas every rider faces every time they thumb or kick the ignition. There is a reason you won that “best blog” my friend, and this post was a great illustration of that.

My hat is off to you, sir.

Harv

First, I would like to disagree with Harv. It is not “live the life you were given as you see fit. Its no one elses but yours.”

Rather, as I see it, your life also belongs to your wife and your children as well. You know what I mean.

However, to look at this a bit differently, I come from an aviation career, a good part of which has been spent investigating the events leading to to catastrophic accidents and loss of life.

In many cases, “poor judgement” and “poor decision making” on the part of the pilot proved to be lethal. I am tempted to assign the same blame to you.

However, there is another factor. In many aviation accidents, the pilot didn’t realize how much trouble he/she was in until it was too late. I think in your case, you knew from the “gitgo” that you were “in trouble”.

All of which goes to say that this caused you to ride home with an extremely high sense of awareness. Your senses were tuned to the maximum level, and your reactions were quick and without delay. I think that is what saved you from what at the least would have been a wrecked scooter…and probably worse.

It seems to me that fatal motorcycle accidents usually occur when the rider is in a complacent state, i.e. not really all that attentive, and then from out of nowhere…it comes.

Your blog is awesome. Please carry on.

Jef

james

Yes, you learn from your mistakes but you could have learned your lesson by stopping 10 feet after you started and leaving your scooter next to a country store or something. “Learning” means recognizing a mistake, not recognizing and deciding to continue making that mistake for 2 hours. My 2 cents.

Very interesting topic.

Here are a few more thoughts.

Skill level: I’m not a rider but from reading your posts you appear to me to be an experienced rider at this point. And with every ride you are both expanding and deepening your skill level through those experiences. You have now the best of both types of experiences: mile deep and foot deep, and mile wide and many more than a foot deep.

Positive attitude: Tom Brown, Jr., makes for great reading doesn’t he? Yes, the mind is a very powerful “place” and positive attitude is one of the most important components in survival. Not the only one, but certainly one of the top contenders.

Chance: Most people don’t like to admit it, I suspect, but luck is one of those imponderables which determines significant outcomes. We try to control as many of the variables as we can but the roll of the dice has a hand here also, and it’s not just a probabilistic function, although that is one of the factors.

So, to the extent that you’re open to input on your personal reflection on wisdom and folly, here’s mine: the risk factor was heavily over-loaded on that ride.

You had the skill level, but it sounds like it was at the edges of your ability – but that became increasingly apparent as you continued on. Your mind was unsettled the further you went so the easy application of skills – for example – after the sudden shock of nearly being knocked down on the seas only to be followed but a skillful application of your abilities under arduous circumstances – was not there.

And finally, the part that really leaps out at me about that ride was the unpredictablilty of the other cars. That is always a factor when riding, but it was tremendously increased that day.

Chance was with you that day. And with that roll of chance you were given the opportunity to reflect on the whole event.

I am glad you are well.

Tim