Here you can see how the road slips around the side of the hill out of sight. Right at that point, the curve gets tighter and stays tight. This requires the bike to either lose speed or lean over further to carry the speed it has. If you lose speed to fast, the rear tire may slide out. If you brake, the bike stands up almost every time and you shoot off the road. The correct response is to stay on the throttle and if you have the ground clearance, lean over more. This is not usually the instinctive response unfortunately without training.

  Beth is up and walking around, still high on the adrenaline. Here you can clearly see the skid mark. She did realize her mistake and let off the brake while keeping the bike upright. Had she tried to lean into the turn with a locked rear tire, it would have been nasty indeed. It looks as if she tried to make the turn after letting off the brake, but then she realized it wasn't meant to be and stood it back up to try to ride it out into the grass. The final resting place of the bike was to the left of the pale patch of grass behind my bike.

  Since she decided to leave the road in an upright and controlled position, I think she might have made it but for one problem. You can see here that there is a slight ditch where the ground goes down from the edge of the road and then angles back up on the other side. She still had the bike upright until she hit this slope change and that is when she fell over on the left side of the bike. The picture is taken from where she left the pavement. She went in a straight line to the bottom of the ditch and then landed to the left of the pale patch of grass. Just at the edge of the hill there are the TOPS of trees. Over that is a very very steep drop off!

  This is taken right by where the bike came to rest. You can see how soft the ground is here. It had rained the night before so the ground was soft and damp. The bike suffered minor cosmetic damage that was fixed later for just over three hundred dollars. Pretty low repair bill for a Triumph! You can also see how the curve gets tighter as it goes on around the hill.

  I could swear I rewound that roll of film a few minutes ago!! I find out the hard way when I open the back of the camera, DOH!! Fortunately, the picture is not a total loss. You can see the turn signal hanging down and the broken head light bracket. There are two small dings on the tank, one from the triple clamp and the other from the bottom of the windscreen. Neither broke through the undercoat of the paint to the metal. We got new brackets for the windscreen and are still using it.

  This picture also bore the brunt of my ineptitude. I took this so we could remember the location on the parkway where the accident occurred.