“THE INCIDENT”
Part 1
The plan was to ride with a buddy some Slovenian Gravel, the Mangart Pass Road, two Italian high alpine connection trails and parts of the Slovenian Trans Euro Trail aka TET. The thing with plans is that sometimes they aren’t working as estimated.
The Late Spring Ride 2018 showed me well that sometimes a whole plan can go awry … .
On the second day of our ride we started in Styria near the area of Teichalm and followed some good maintained roads from northern Styria southwards to the Austrian/Slovenian border line. After the border crossing we rode on Slovenias gravel tracks and followed them until, … ahm ja…, until, the unexpected happened …
“Good morning Чернотa!”
After a silent night we started in the second day of our tour.
We got up and after doing the morning toilet the shelter was quickly stowed at its place in our…
motorcycle saddle bags. At around 0700 in the morning, when we just want to leave this place, two huntsmen came out of the woods and talked to us. They immediately told us strictly, that we have been staying last night on a private area and that this is not allowed. We explained to them that we pushed the motorcycles the last few meters from the gravel track into the woods and that we generally care about the soft forest floor. We aren’t one of this Enduro riders which were leaving deep scars in the floor of nature due to uncontrolled back wheel spinning. Also we told them that we took all our rubbish with us. After a few nice additional words and at the moment, when the younger hunts men told us that he is riding a 701 Husky SM everything was fine. We wished farewell and off we went. phew
After this early excitement my buddy and I drove to Austrias second biggest city: Graz.
Like always we followed some small back country roads …
until we reached the …
the edge of Graz, where heavy rain was awaiting us. We put the rain gear on and went on through the city to the little village of Thal …
where this imposing transformer, made of old car/motorcycle parts, which have been welded together was posing. Its …
named “Bobo.” A real funny thing, near the …
Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum (Probably the most famous Austrian citizen).
The heavy rain showers finally stopped near the …
Austrian/Slovenian border where the …
two sisters and their riders got their first brake on this day. Just a few meters towards the border …
endless gravel roads started.
We followed the borderline westwards. Besides the foggy clouds …
…
the landscape offered some real nice views.
After fueling up our water supplies at this little stream …
the ride went on along this nice …
scenery. (Here you can see a huge blowdown in the distant forest on the back of the opposite mountain)
While we had another short …
break here at this church in the middle of Slovenia’s hilly nowhere my riding buddy and I agreed in having a big pizza for lunch at the next bigger village we’re going to pass.
Hungry we went on …
along some well-built gravel roads. My buddy was leading our small 2 men/2 bike group at this moment. Short after that picture we arrived at a soft bend to the left. At the moment when I passed this bend just behind my buddy I saw him for the time of a blink struggling through the air in about 1,5m (5ft) height left aside his also flying 690ty. Both flew down the hill on the right side of the gravel road. Чернотas sister had a hard impact in a tree. My buddy thankfully missed this tree barely just to strike about 4m (12ft) behind the next, bigger tree. My heart stopped for a moment. 🙁
I accelerated Чернотa to the place of accident and throw her in the dirt/jumped of and went down to my buddy. The picture was terrible: My buddy was literally wrapped around the thicker trunk. His head and feet were hanging down the hill, while his chest and belly have been squeezed between the steep hill and the trunk. He neither was reacting on my shouts, nor he was moving anymore. 🙁
“RIDER DOWN!!!”
“690ty DOWN!!!”
To be continued …