There I was, flying along in perfect harmony with the bike, having become literally the upper half of the motorcycle, flesh and metal as one, totally in the zone with all senses alive. Then a downhill bend, one with a decreasing radius loomed, and as I began to line up my apex a fallen tree branch came into my line of sight.

A branch about as thick as one of the mufflers on the Twin-Cooled Ultra I was riding. There was nowhere to go as a B-Double was negotiating the bend from the other direction. So I tried to hit that branch as squarely as I could, going in an instant from being in the zone to full pucker city.

Bam! As I hit it with the front wheel, the bike bucked and squirmed and then the rear wheel hit and I was jolted right off the seat and as I came down again I found myself on the narrow, partially gravelly shoulder, heading for the close by roadside tree line. Not good.

While I don’t remember my every move during those adrenalin charged moments, somehow the Ultra felt more stable than it had a right to be, and I was able to guide it back into the left lane.

Now, I went back over that incident many times in my mind the rest of that afternoon. Everything had been lined up against me; the setting sun was in my eyes, flickering tree shadows added to my visual difficulties, the corner was downhill with the aforementioned decreasing radius, plus it had a negative camber. Oh, and my speed was – shall we say – a tad inappropriate for that section of road. If you get my drift…