What have I done wrong now?

Normally I know when I do something stupid, thankfully not that often now, but did not think I was going too fast and nowt wrong with tyres. So was it just catching the edge of the mud?

Just cosmetic damage for the bike, scratches and bar end snapped off, but the mirror adjusting bolt looks rusted inside so could not reposition it. Managed the 15 miles home okay with one mirror, one elbow, and codeine though. Am I an idiot that despite a possible fracture I am more disappointed that tomorrow will be my first Sunday off the bike since March?

Hey Michael, you are not an idiot. The fact that you’ve put this video up and asked about the fall is evidence of that.

From what I can see, it looks like you were on a more slippery part of the road, just as your tacho hit the 5,500rpm mark. I would have preferred to have been slightly further to the right and would have scrubbed off a bit more speed. There’s the mud that you can see, and possibly mud that you cannot, and that is why I would have been further out to the right. That would have given me less vision thorugh the bend, but with less speed, braking distance would have still been good.

I really hope that you haven’t fractured anything.

Ouch, sorry to see :frowning: looks like a wet road, possibly dirt or mud on there as Aceman said. Looks like perhaps more gravel and mud from that driveway off the bend? Mostly bad luck, but for me I just try to stay away from any bit of the road that looks different to most of the rest of it

The best I can make of today is learn from it, so would be stupid not to get advice. And it is the main reason I use a camera anyway (so why I keep the instruments in view even though everyone rightly says not to). So many thanks to you both.

It was foggy in places this morning, so I think that is what left the road a bit damp. Combine water and mud and I really should have been more careful and kept further from it.

Normally I do try and keep to nice clean and smooth bits of road when I can, but I used to drift too far to the right so think my fear of that got the better of me. The lane was plenty wide enough to safely be further right though, so I guess I can put it down to bad positioning for the conditions. I will definitely keep Aceman’s advice in mind in future.

Will see the fracture clinic next week, the doctor was not certain from the x-ray so could still hopefully be nothing.

From watching your video You put into practice what is right … staying to the left on a right hand bend to maximise your view of the road ahead ( vice versa on a left hand bend staying as far righto the white line as safe to do so to maximise the view ahead ) BUT you need to also place into that calculation is SAFETY over View at all times …so if hazard compromises your ability for maximum view you maintain your safety by avoiding the hazard which may mean reducing your view ahead , reducing your speed and altering your road position but again keeping the SAFETY aspect in check at all times .
Hope all heals well

Definitely looks like your rear got over some of the gravel pulled off that drive on the corner, like the others said, just try and stay away from it. a bit unlucky too.
One lesson to take away, is just to look further up the road, as far as you can see really, and if anything causes doubt or alarm then do something about it. Taking that corner as an example, the gravel is evident on the approach, so you might decide to trim some more speed off (I don’t think you were going too fast BTW) so that you could take a more central line but with a bit less lean. Once you got round the corner the gravel came out onto the road far more than it had previously so in reaction you could have considered turning harder and holding a tighter line through the bend to avoid it.
You never know what is round any corner which is why it is so important to only ride so fast that you can stop on your side of the road in the distance you can see to be clear.
You are not an idiot by any means, like the rest of us you are still learning, just some lessons are harder than others, anyone on here that says they have never fallen off is a liar, or on Lplates and just hasn’t yet, so we’ve all been there.
Hope your elbow gets better soon.

That corner looks really familiar to me… Pretty sure I came off on that same corner a couple of years back.

As everyone has said, you did nothing wrong as such. It’s the time of year where the roads are a bit shit and you have to take extra care. Some good advice from some of the more “mature” riders above.

Can’t really add any more than what’s been said although I’d consider looking at that bend and the driveway in more detail. It looks to me as if the gravel may have been the cause of the off, therefore the owner of the drive may have been negligent in allowing the gravel to spread onto the highway!

edit - If Timmy Fox did came a cropper at the very same location for the very same reason, the spilled out, then the owner of the drive has certainly been negligent. Well that’s my opinion.

Local jobsworths at the council should be tasked to address this whilst your favourite injury lawyers 4 you should peruse the personal liability clause in their household insurance to make amends.

Cheers all. I tend to be self critical (hence the thread title) but have actually become reasonably confident with my riding. The idiot comment was more a worry I am feeling too cocky, which in unlike me, if more disappointed at being unable to ride than with injuring myself and a potentially bad technique. And with my CBT up in February I am thinking towards training so want to be realistic about myself.

The first time I felt the bike slide when crossing a wet cover on a corner made me extra vigilant at looking out for them in wet conditions. Whilst I obviously look for and try to avoid debris in the road, I guess I just failed to do so properly, so will certainly be playing closer attention for that now too.

This road, incidentally, was inside where the M23 and M25 meet: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2523221,-0.1216046,126m/data=!3m1!1e3

Having seen the street view I’d have knocked on their door and told them their gravel had just caused me to drop my bike. Get their details and put it all in the hands of someone who cares.

Well done Michael in tricky conditions, I`d have taken a similar line just offside of the obvious crud.
Bad luck on the slip, hope you and the bike are OK.

Oi Jets that driveway is where you would have been leaving a corner marker on a normal rideout … it has sufficent gravel to grass ratio to use .

Had a longer look at the bike earlier, and to my completely untrained eye it does all seem okay but for the cosmetic damage. Things stick out in the right places and move if and where they should.

I have also managed to get the bolt off the mirror, it was the thread on the mirror stem which was rusted. Luckily I had just ordered some ACF-50, so can easily clean, protect, and fix it.

The bar ends are just plastic, so when it snapped off it left a bit inside. Are these simply jammed in, so could just screw something into then pull it out, or glued in, in which case how do I remove it? And does it matter what I replace them with, would I have to pay the insurance as a mod if I do not use the same again? Not overly fussed, but with metal ones being cheaper they have the advantage of being both metal and cheaper!

The instrument panel was already a bit wonky from early drops, but oddly now seems even more wonky looking at the bike front on, but more-or-less how it should look when on it. It all still works, though.

Finally, is it worth getting an expert to give it a proper look over anyway?

On my servicing thread I felt my headlight was angled slightly to the left, and this is definitely the case. The big piece of metal that mounts it to the bike comes slightly away from the forks on the right side. Measuring the height of the bolts which mount the lamp from the ground, it is a quarter inch lower on that side than the other.

Not sure how easy this would be to fix myself, so as much fun as it was being able to take my rear brake apart to clean it myself, maybe this is now a reason to just hand it over to a professional to sort out everything.

Normally there will be a long bolt on top of which sits the plastic bar end. A bit further along the bolt, sits a rubber compound, and at the very end (most often) will be a nut. See picture below:
http://www.holeshot.com/barsnake/images/bar_ends2.jpg
The rubber part with the nut at the end goes inside the handlebar. Once inside, the bolt is tightened from outside (head’s sticking out from the plastic bar end). As the bolt is tightened, the rubber part expands inside the handlebar, and that’s what holds the whole thing in place.

Sometimes you will have bar ends that simply screw in inside the handle bar like so:
http://www.fz09.org/forum/attachments/5146d1399576735-bar-end-mirrors-better-way-img_20140508_120347_751.jpg

In rare cases it can be a combination of the two.

The stock YBR ones are just a single piece of hard plastic, as seen in these knock-offs on eBay:

I did try searching for advice on replacing them but could not find anything to say how they are removed, although any standard ⅞"/18mm ones will work. It is just a simple hollow bar. My guess is they are just jammed in, the part still inside the bar seems pretty firmly stuck but I have not the arm strength to properly work it.

Photo will help …

If they’re hollow, and the outside part snapped off, is there anything left to grip?

Frankly, when I was having trouble getting mine out, I just pushed them in further inside the handle bar. Out of sight, out of mind.

Also, what TimR said ^^

Plastic bar end weights, how does that work?

I guess they are just ‘bar ends’ not weights.