all the time. glad you handeled it. i lean at times so far i hit the pegs hard and it happens and some times at the end of the day on the first curve on the way home from the bike shop i dont give the tires time to worm up and slide about 12 inches every time. getting use to it

How were the road conditions? how is the quality of your rear tire? have you traveld this road before and noticed debris or oil on the road at all ?

Yeah that kinda stuff will stop your heart, but sounds like you kept your composure and pulled it out. Its a learning experience you wont forget

Yep, cold tires do it all the time. Glad you made it through and didn't panic.

Intersections often have crap all over them you gotta be careful of . Cold tires are harder and slicker . Incorrect pressure can cause handling problems . Crappy tires in general can do that , too . LOTS of stuff that has nothing to do with what you're telling the bike to do , even though sometimes THAT is the problem itself . Can I see the instant replay ?

I recently had the back wheel slide out on me twice in the same ride for very different reasons.

First was this very steep downhill sharp turn to the right. The suggested speed is 15mph. I was probably doing 35, when I felt the rear slip. I kept it all together and it didn't really register how close I had come to dropping it until I hit the straight at the bottom. I knew for a fact I wasn't hitting the back brake, because I was watching for it to make sure I didn't. I thought it might be the tire pressure, so I checked them and the rear was about 3 pounds low.

Then, just making a normal right turn, the rear slid again. This time, I was going pretty slow, and I caught it with my low foot motocross syle. If I hadn't put my foot out, I would have gone down for sure. When I turned around and went back to the intersection, there was a fine mulch of those damn dead leaves which are everywhere. Traffic had ground them up real fine, and because of that, they were almost invisible on the road. I never saw them, and I look for patches of dead leaves constantly.

It just goes to show the different things that can conspire to ruin a perfectly good ride.

Yeah , it's the stuff you DON'T see that makes you slip that makes you paranoid . I HATE shadows now ever since the paint incident last summer .

I think the last time I had a really serious fishtail was late last year or early this year (I remember it still being a bit nippy -- an uncommon occurance here)... Seems like one of those trucks that are used to pump out deep fryer vats had popped a leak at the drain in the back and laid a 450 foot long, lane-wide light grease spot on the road, from just where a new lane forms on the right all the way through it's dedicated turn onto a bridge (Eastbound Gulf-to-Bay onto Southbound McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater). I came in a bit hot, hit my brakes to shed speed and with those HH pads in the rear, it started fishtailing. I kept it upright and managed to get it wrestled down to a standstill about a foot from the curb. Fortunately, everyone behind me saw me doing it and slowed way down... Unfortunately, those who went through the intersection before us hadn't been so lucky, and it had claimed 2 bikes already in the previous 5 minutes (including a 3-day old Kawasaki 6R that must have had a couple grand worth of damages).

I got on the phone to fire-rescue and they dispatched out for one of the riders, plus I got the cops to shut off the lane until something could be done... While we were waiting for fire-rescue & the cops to show up, car after car went fishtailing through the same area (fire rescue, to their credit, showed up within 3 minutes... and managed to avoid fishtailing their fire truck too excessively!)

But, back to the topic at hand...
Most asphault doesn't suck up liquids very well (it just kind of pockets in the depressions), and left-hand turn lanes are particularly bad because of old cars sitting there waiting for the light, leaking oil or automatic transmission fluid. Diesel fuel is just as bad, if not worse. Then there's the painted lines (which are usually a heat-laminated plastic these days on major roadways) -- which are also slicker than slick if they aren't 100% dry/clean. Even the most minor sprinkle can drive old oils and fluids up out of the pockets, making the road particularly slick and dangerous right at the start of a rain or during heavy ground-fog.

Glad you came out of it ok. Just one more lesson learned.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

I know how you feeld. I had my rear tire slip on transmission fluid when I was turning into a parking lot. Scared the crap out of me as I had just fixed the bike from the previous drop.

DAMMIT i wish i read this post before i rode saturday night. just so you all are on the same page, he is explaining the corner i crashed on this saturday night... thought i was handling the corner quite well and all of sudden, by complete surprise, i lost the rear. i dont believe i was doing over 35-40mph.. which is not horribly fast for this corner. anyways, thanks CP... ride safe guys!

You went down again? Unce, tice, fee tines a mady

oh man, lets not go back there...