OLD BLASTARD: Bike trips, falls, pins, damn it.

NELLYSFORD -- Am I all right? Am I all right, she asks.

I'm on the ground on my belly and I have a 375-pound hunk of East Troy sitting on my right leg with my right  foot pinned facing left.

Yeah, I'm OK.

"Say," I ask, "could you help get this bike off of my leg?"

I don't know what Thumper was thinking.  We had just taken a cool and brisk Saturday morning ride down U.S. 250 to Route 151 and up to the Nelson County Farmer's Market -- a favorite destination -- to get some pie and organically grown vegetables and had pulled into the grassy parking lot when we saw Stef's car.

Naturally, the Thump wanted to roll on up and say hey. Be all cool looking, ya' know, cruising over the grass, maybe put the rear brake on a little hard  to get a couple feet of slide-to-a-stop, make an entrance. So, we hung a left, avoiding the dirt driveway all the cages take and went over land.

There are mistakes one makes. There are bad mistakes one makes. This was a bad one.

The lawn was moist and dewy and, while many things are at their best whilst moist and dewy, impromptu grass roadways are not among them. Sure, they may be easily transversed at a slow and careful speed -- my normal speed -- but for some reason, my right hand sort of gave a little extra throttle in advance of making a grand entrance.

Farmers Market after the fall

The rear tire slid out and to the right, spinning like Rumplestiltskin making gold. I corrected with handlebars while rolling off the throttle, perhaps a bit to suddenly, and the rear slid off to the left.

This was not good.

Back to the right, back to the left, a little rear brake and the rear tire -- which had about as much traction on the grass as a pig on ice -- started skidding, making the slide worse and deeper.

I kept my eyes straight ahead, just like I teach all of those safety students, when I realized that I was about to make a grand entrance right into the back of Stef's Subaru, which would have been an unhappy event being as she had her back to the careening train wreck about to ride straight up her back and into the hatchback.

I reapply the rear brake and the oscillation only grows wider while the distance to crash grows shorter. Finally, I apply more rear and, in a micro-second, my grand entrance is complete.  I go down hard to the right with the bike on top of my leg,  no high side, no low side just slip and slide side.

My ego is bleeding and unconscious. I lay there stunned for a second.

Oops, I think, that wasn't what I INTENDED.

What it looks like standing up

Surprised out of her shorts, Stef, asks if I'm OK. Except for the bike on me, I'm fine. The bike, designed for idiots to learn how to ride, and for some idiots to continue riding, is fine except for chunks of grass imbedded in the airbox.

She lifts, I slip out from beneath the baby Buell and pick it up the rest of the way. Slow speed means no damage.

"Wow," she says, just like the SOB that she is, "I bet you're glad you weren't riding a Gold Wing."

You don't know how.