Part 11.

I wasn’t going to add another part to this saga, due to a stupid mistake that I made and caused an accident when on a ride out with Gix and DaveRS. That morning, I had ridden up to Gix’s place where I also met up with DaveRS. Then we were off up to the Cat and Fiddle pub in the Peak District to meet up with some other guys off the GixxerJunkies forum. Gix led the way, I was in the middle and DaveRS was bringing up the rear. I was hoping that DaveRS would go before me, that way I if had to stop I wouldn’t hold anybody up. Luckily for him I wasn’t behind him as things turned out. We didn’t even get out of the city where Gix lived as I had a B2BM moment and ruined the rideout. A new record for me. We came to a roundabout where we waiting for it to clear and were waiting to turn left. I looked right to see if I could move off, thinking Gix had already done so. The car I was waiting for had turned left not bothering to indicate. I then moved off, but I hadn’t noticed that Gix was still waiting. She had obviously noticed something I had missed. I rode into the back of her mint condition bike which toppled over, causing her to roll off and ending up wedged under a crash barrier at the side of the road. After we got her bike upright, Gix was helped up and we assessed the damage. Her bike was completely B2BMed. Gix was very good about it considering, as the fact that I’m still breathing to this day has proved. She said later that she was very impressed with my vocal self-admonitions though, nearly all of it unprintable. Some Traffic Police stopped to question as about the events and to check that everyone was uninjured. One of the guys raised Gix’s ire slightly by suggesting that her bike was too big for her slender frame. It was all it good humour though and the police officer was allowed to live out the rest of his natural life.

A while later we got back to her home to inspect the damage more thoroughly. The damage to my bike was negligible but Gix’s repair costs were quite a bit more. After a while I slunk off home to miserably don sackcloth and ashes in penitence for my undying and everlasting shame. My insurance handled things, though rather ineptly (bit of an understatement that!) when it came round to getting her bike repaired. The catalogue of their stupidity was almost endless. Her claims handlers collected her bike and whisked it away down south to be inspected and my insurers sent the engineer to Gix’s home to inspect it. It was actually sitting alone and forlorn in some aeroplane hanger near somewhere down south. Then they took ages to do the inspection, lost the engineers report when it had been inspected and had to do another. Then they nearly lost that second report when they attached it to an entirely different claim. It was only the fact that while I was chasing them for the progress of the repairs to her bike that they noticed this and corrected it. As well as all that, some of the required repairs were not authorised. The issue of her helmet is still outstanding. I have different insurers now incidentally. Gix’s claim handlers had lent her a Yamaha FZ1000 as a temporary replacement for her beloved Gixxer 1000 to make matters worse. I think Gix has forgiven me though; I still have my kneecaps intact anyway. I think she has a new found respect for Yamahas now… although, maybe not.

The repairs to my bike were done soon enough though. The insurers would only cough up for a stock indicator to replaced the arrow one I had on the left side, which left the bike coming back looking rather odd. The repairers though, Walmsley Bike Care, did give an old stock right though, if I wanted to put that one on the right. They even dug out a horn to replace the one that stopped working and put it on for free. I can highly recommend them. They had remembered me from the last time I had to have the bike repaired. “See ya soon, then”, I said in parting to the guy who delivered the bike back home.

I think an old habit may have cropped up where I keep screwing up my left eye when concentrating on something. So it would not have been surprising that I did not see that Gix was still there. It is not the first time it has happened too. There was the two times before on a bike, one of those times on my DAS course, and once in the car. Even more worrying, I nearly went into the back of Gix’s bike a little earlier when she slowed to pull into a garage. I have come to the decision that I will not be riding in a group again. It’s far too deadly for everybody else. If invited on a ride out again, I’ll just meet the guys there... or give them a couple of days head start.