Our illustrious editor, Ms. Buck, has been asking... no, nagging... me to write this piece for almost a year, ever since my ungraceful Nancy Kerrigan impression on a motorcycle in Manhattan last January. I finally succumbed to her persuasions.

The day started off comfortably for January: mid-40s and sunny. I decided to ride my Triumph Super III to visit some friends at their race bike garage in Brooklyn. When we left the garage for dinner in the Heights it had gotten much colder and the wind had picked up considerably, a sure sign that a winter front was on its way. A little voice told me to run back to the garage and pick up my "cold weather bike", a 1994 Road King. Long wheelbase Harleys handle slippery roads better than a front-heavy sportbike, particularly the Super III with its sensitive, high-tech anchors. But people were hungry and it was going to be a quick stop anyway so...

Dinner led to a few games of pool when the bar's owner, Steve Gallo, tapped me on the shoulder and directed my attention to the front window where big FAT flakes of snow were falling heavily. Crap! Gotta fly! Steve practically demanded that I bring the bike into the bar for the night. But a quick glimpse of the streets showed that they were still pretty clean so I thought I could make the four-mile trip back to the barn. Hey, I've ridden in worse, and I wasted a few more minutes' precious time relating my Sportster's and my conquest over a 10-inch blizzard on the New Jersey Turnpike years ago.

I only got three blocks before I realized that I might have made a mistake. The snow was piling up and the temps were significantly colder near the river: 18 degrees I learned later. Even worse, there had been no moisture for over a week so the roads were greasy as well. I thought about turning back and taking Mr. Gallo up on his offer but decided I could handle it if I took it carefully. The irony is, if I had been drinking I probably would have retreated back to the bar and a warm cab.

As I got closer to the East River the roads were coated with frozen white stuff. As I pulled on to the Brooklyn Bridge I knew I was in deep doo-doo. The snow was almost an inch deep and I could feel the back tire slithering over the road even at the nominal 15mph of the traffic flow. Visibility was down to about a hundred feet so I also had the angst of worrying about one of our kamikaze cab drivers from the sandy countries rear- ending me at any moment. Sure enough, I could see ahead that two cages had done exactly that. Damn!

I literally talked my way over the bridge a foot at a time. But the worst hurdle was ahead: the sharp right turn off the bridge by City Hall, which is notoriously greasy. It claims so many vehicles even in warm weather that it is permanently bounded by cement barricades. I negotiated it at 5mph hugging the inside wall away from the spooge of overflowing crankcases. I made it! "One mile till home," I told myself. It's a straight shot up well- traveled streets to my garage so I relaxed a bit. A light was turning yellow a half-block away. A little voice told me to run it because there was no cross traffic. I decided instead to slow gradually to a stop and allow my heart rate slow to around 200 or so. A moment later, I was sliding on my ass in front of the picturesque federal court building.

As I was tobogganing down the road all I could think was "huh??". The road was slush- free, just damp. Lying in the middle of Centre Street, I did a very quick body check then quickly got up to retrieve the motorcycle. I attempted to lift the bike, slipped, and fell on my ass once again, then again. I learned the answer to my "huh". I was standing on a lake of solid ice courtesy of a broken water main leaking from a manhole cover a half- block south of me. I flagged over a limo driver to help me pick up the bike. We both slipped. Then a cab driver stopped to help and the three of us managed to get the bike to the curb. Thanks to the low speed, damage to the bike was cosmetic. But the flooded carbs made it impossible to start the engine and the cold weather quickly drained the battery. I pushed the 570-pound monster home.

In the aftermath, I attempted to reconstruct the accident. After much back-and-forth with the Monday-morning quarterbacks on the Motorcycle Safety internet mailing list, this is what I concluded. After safely negotiating the bridge and seeing the end in sight, I relaxed. My attention and judgment did as well. I had forgotten that it was still extremely cold and the roads were wet. Even though there was no snow on the pavement, black ice was very likely (not to mention a skating rink's worth of it). I attempted to slow the bike for the traffic light by ever-so-slightly dragging the front brake. While it is not exactly MSF chapter-and-verse to use this technique, the Triumph's rear brake is so grabby... notoriously so... that I avoid using it even in dry conditions. I have used this braking procedure a thousand times before on wet roads, but apparently never on ice. The front brake rotor was wet from my snowmobile trek across the bridge. The friction of dragging the front brake dried it. When the now-dry pads suddenly hit a dry patch of rotor the brakes bit. Even though I was moving at less than 15mph, the bike's weight shifted forward just enough to reduce traction on the already marginal rear tire to nil. The back end slid around and I was down. Physics strikes again.

But the accident actually started hours before, when I refused to listen to those little voices in my head. They told me that conditions were rapidly closing in on any motorcyclist unwise enough to be caught in them. This is the sort of accident that seems to happen more often to experienced riders than to novices. Novices don't have a library of winter war stories to elevate their confidence over simple common sense.

Actually, I don't know if careful front and trail braking would have changed the outcome much. Even if I'd stopped without incident I almost certainly would have been flat on my back once I put my boot down on that lake of ice. So the real lesson here is probably less about technique than it is about knowing when not to ride. Sometimes discretion is the hardest skill to master.

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