[gunsmoker]

Forgive the revival of an old thread but I figure my comments aren't the only ones worth hearing. These other folks who contributed stories about dropping dirt bikes are worth seeing again too.

A year ago (almost to the day) I dropped my 600-lb. cruiser bike on my own gravel driveway while riding at home at midnight.
I was probably going 10 miles an hour down a steep downhill curve and I used the front brake--bad idea!!

There was a little bit of damage to the bike and I walked with a limp for three months afterward.

Now today I dropped the bike again.

This time it wasn't moving. I had just rolled it backward into my garage from the driveway. The engine was off and had been off for several minutes.
It was in neutral.

After I got it properly positioned in my garage for parking, I let it lean to the left side and I hopped off of it, but I must've accidentally pushed it forward while I was hopping off because it started rolling forward! I saw this while I was hopping on foot because I didn't have my feet down yet.

Tried to stop the bike's FWD motion, but I wasn't fast enough at first,

and once the kickstand folded up and the bike started falling, I wasn't strong enough to stop it, especially with my poor foot placement.
The bike dropped, pulling me down with it .

I broke off my left rearview mirror and spilled about 3 cups of gasoline on the garage floor (that was due to the fact that my gas cap has a bad rubber gasket but I intentionally left it that way because it provides for equalization of air pressure in the tank with the outside atmosphere.)

PS: Just like the first time I dropped my bike a year ago the hardest part of picking it back up was getting out from underneath it --it sort of pinned me down.

Once I was standing next to it, I just lifted it up by the handlebars pushed against the seat with my thigh and hips, and it was fully upright in a few seconds .

 

[gunsmoker]

And I'd just painted my mirrors to match the red color of some of the other body panels on my bike I wasn't even finished with the paint job because I needed to do a second coat and clean up a little bit of the straight edges. Now I need new mirrors.

 

[gunsmoker]

This weekend I was riding in the mountains an hour from home,
and I met a fellow biker at a gas station-- a young woman, college-aged,
who had a 1998 Honda Magna (V4 engine, gobs of torque and horsepower, but only on a 500-lb. bike).
This was her FIRST motorcycle, ever, and she still didn't have a full class M license, but rather a learner's permit (good only for the daytime, and no interstate highways).
She mentioned that she'd only dropped it once, coming home into her own gravel driveway, which is curvy and sloped downhill.
I told her that the only and only time I dropped a motorcycle (street bike), ever, was my Honda Shadow, in my own gravel driveway, also curvy and sloped downhill.

EDITED TO ADD: SHe said she was able to lift the bike back up, alone.
It suffered only one broken mirror, right side, from the drop. And hers (like mine) didn't have crash bars. I told her that crash bars / highway bars would help make a fallen bike easier to lift, since it wouldn't be pressed down so low to the ground.