Crashed my bike tonight. I am still confused about what exactly I did wrong, but one minute I was riding along 23rd Avenue, and the next my bike was slipping out from under me, and then I went rolling down the street. There was a paint stripe across the street at about the right place, so I think I must have lost traction going across it, but I really don’t know what happened.

I had all my leather on and I am really glad I did. My ankle is sore – I must have twisted it as I landed – but I got right up and moved my bike out of traffic. I have no scrapes or significant pain, basically just bounced off the pavement. My left hip is a bit sore but not in any serious way.

The bike suffered more damage than I did, but it came off pretty well too. The headlight is crooked, the handlebar is torqued funny, the mirrors went every which way, the turn signal broke, and there’s a dent in the gas tank, but the engine guards did their job and the road rash on the tip of the exhaust is not visibly any worse than it had been before. It’ll all clean up except the dent in the gas tank, which I’m pretty unhappy about.

Well damn – I was really happy about the way I had been not crashing this bike. I laid each of my previous three bikes down within two weeks of buying them, so I’ve actually been doing pretty well with this one.