Pretty things are always dangerous, you heard me right. You can see the truth in this everywhere you look. In nature most animals have learned that if whatever they're trying to eat is pretty, it usually has some form of poison. Look at deep sea creatures, get drawn to a light and its always a predator. As humans we can even see this in bars, the prettier she is the quicker and more painful the shoot down will be. (Ok, I kid on the last one, but felt I needed a third example).

The same principle goes for riding motorcycles, if its pretty it ends up being dangerous. A specific example is the fall. I love riding in the fall as it reminds me of when I was learning how to ride and there's a nice crispness in the air. That throttle snaps just a tad quicker than in the hot mugginess of summer. The roar of your pipes carry just a tad further across the still morning, scattering herds of deer that a few months ago would have been asleep and off the roads by this time. Finally you get to ride in the most beautiful display of foliage fireworks you'll get all year. Explosions of red and yellow and orange flash past as you lean through the turns and push that crisp air just a tad harder than you did during the summer, racing to get one more run in before your tires are too cold to really lean.

And that's when it gets you, you round a corner, blast through that patch of leaves that you expect to fly up around you like in the commercials and all of a sudden you're sliding off into the trees which aren't quite as pretty when you're hurtling headfirst through branches and road signs. What happened? Well, those pretty leaves which you were enjoying happened to still be wet underneath from the rains yesterday or the day before. As you were mid corner your rear wheel caught a pocket of wet leaves that acted exactly like ice and you lost the rear, leading to a good fast low side and gear check. Its exactly like riding a bicycle over a crushed water bottle, all of a sudden something's stuck under your wheel and instead of being connected to the road you're sliding. And once you lose the rear, its game over on a motorcycle.

Yes, riding in the fall is gorgeous, and I love it. Had a great ride today (in the wet) with leaves showering down around my helmet (the road appears completely different on two, you're surrounded by the leaves swirling around you) and a gray sky bringing out the difference in colors all around. But you always have to remember, if its pretty its probably more dangerous. So ride just a tad easier when you come to a leaf filled road, as fun as the commercials are you don't want to take the chance of hitting a wet patch underneath the top layer, or a pothole that's been covered, or a sewer grate that might still be cold, wet, metal that will love to just eat your wheel for dinner.

Ride to live, period.

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