Street Vibrations and the Law of Gravity

File this under “how to end the party before it even gets going,” a category that has become increasingly crowded in Nevada, where automobiles, motorcycles, and gravity are engaged in a long-running disagreement over who is actually in charge.

The latest episode occurred on Geiger Grade Road just after 8:45 p.m. near Bullion Road, where a motorcycle apparently decided that a curve was less of a curve and more of a suggestion. The Nevada Highway Patrol and Nevada Department of Transportation reported an injury crash involving two people on the motorcycle, and the ditch, as usual, was standing by in case somebody needed it.

This is unfortunate timing, because motorcycle riders are gathering in Northern Nevada this weekend for the annual Street Vibrations Fall Rally, an event attracting approximately 50,000 people throughout the weekend. Fifty thousand people is a respectable crowd, when most of them arrive on machines that announce their presence several minutes before their owners do.

There is a certain irony in holding a motorcycle rally in Nevada. The state offers enormous quantities of open road, spectacular scenery, long stretches of pavement, and enough desert to make a person feel they've been granted a private highway by Providence. It also provides curves, traffic, other motorists, weather, wildlife, and gravity, all of which remain stubbornly unwilling to participate in the festivities.

According to the report, the motorcycle turned too fast, flipped, and landed in a ditch, ejecting both the male driver and female passenger. The driver suffered injuries that may include broken bones, while the passenger sustained less serious injuries.

I have always admired the optimism of the human species. Give a man a motorcycle, a winding mountain road, and an approaching curve, and he'll find the profound conviction that physics will recognize his enthusiasm and make an exception.

Physics does not make exceptions.

Gravity is especially unreasonable about this. It has no appreciation for horsepower, chrome, leather, custom exhaust systems, or the fact that one has spent several thousand dollars making a motorcycle look as though it could outrun the Devil himself. Gravity merely waits patiently at the bottom of the ditch and collects what is owed.

And so, before the Street Vibrations Fall Rally has properly begun, one motorcycle has already demonstrated a principal lesson: the road is not impressed.

With tens of thousands of riders arriving in the area, most will presumably make it through the weekend by doing something remarkably unfashionable—slowing down when the road tells them to. This is not nearly as exciting as proving that you can defeat a curve, but it has one tremendous advantage.

You get to continue the party and go home in one piece.