There’s no better feeling than the open road. I started riding late in life and still learn so much — sometimes good, sometimes bad. But wherever I go I’ve learned to expect the unexpected. And sometimes that can happen in your sleep. Literally.
After riding non-stop every day for about 12 days — the longest being almost 700km in the rain — I was getting tired and, without realising it at the time, a little careless. I’ve since learned to rest well and think carefully about everything, whether at the beginning of a ride or at the end of the day. That lesson cost me a night’s sleep and nearly cost me a lot more.
The Day Before
We’d ridden across some fabulous mountain roads with spectacular views — brilliant sunshine, dry roads, the kind of day that makes you forget everything that came before it. We found a campsite at the bottom of the mountain just before returning to the coast. Mid-May, almost no other guests. We set up the tent, ate, showered, talked with the few other people around.
Goodnight. Off to the inflatable beds.
I remember falling asleep fast. Twelve days of hard riding will do that.
3am
The next thing I felt was the tent brushing against my head.
I sat up — confused, disoriented. It was daylight. Cold. Raining. I clambered out of my sleeping bag and out of the tent, and only then did it register what had just happened.
The mountains we’d crossed the day before were now covered in snow. That was the first thing. The second thing was what had been pressing against my head — not a cow, not a dog, as I’d half-imagined in those first groggy seconds — but all 250kg of my BMW R1150GS, lying on its side against the tent.
Twenty centimetres. That’s the margin. Another twenty and it wouldn’t have been the handlebar brushing the tent fabric — it would have been the full weight of the bike, through the end of a single bar, onto my head while I slept.
What Happened
Because of the terrain, I’d parked on the side stand rather than the centre stand. The ground was level enough when I arrived — the side stand kept the bike sitting reasonably straight, which is why I chose it over the centre stand, which would have left the bike on an angle.
What I didn’t account for was rain. Heavy, sustained, overnight rain. The kind that saturates the ground completely. By 3am the side stand had simply sunk into the mud — slowly, imperceptibly, until there was nothing left to hold the bike up.
No damage. No injuries. The bike was fine, I was fine, the tent survived.
The Lesson
Park your bike away from the tent.
And if the ground is soft — find a flat stone, use a piece of wood, anything rigid under the stand. It takes thirty seconds and it’s the kind of thing you only forget once.
Even in our sleep, we learn.
Shot on a compact camera, mid-May, somewhere between the mountains and the Sardinian coast. The snow on the peaks the next morning was unexpected. So was the wake-up call.
