Were you a firebug as a kid? I was. I’m amazed that I didn’t burn down the Little League complex that used to be where the Bandix Dog Park now stands. My idiot brother and I would top off an empty soda can with the good stuff from the shop, bolt across the road, and proceed to try to emulate patterns in the sand, or try to write our names in gasoline. Somehow, we didn’t get burned and didn’t catch acres of Scotch broom on fire. I still can’t tell you how we managed that, but we learned quickly: gasoline and fire equals a bad time if you’re super close to it.
Taylor MacKenzie’s race at Snetterton in 2015 came to a very abrupt halt during the second British SuperBike race, when a fuel line ruptured on his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, spraying onto the engine and exhaust, and turning MacKenzie into a very unwilling Ghost Rider stunt double two laps into the race. MacKenzie was laying into a corner north of 120 MPH when the fire erupted, and in a matter of seconds he righted the bike, went for the grass and jumped off before any major damage was done. Take it from every male on Earth: that’s too much fire too close to some sensitive bits.
MacKenzie took to Facebook later, making light of the situation: “I’ve canceled my wax for tomorrow.” Taylor, when your managers said you should “light a fire under your ass this season”, I don’t think this is what they had in mind. Glad to see everything is alright and you came out unscathed…and lightly toasted.
Caption for header photo:
Taylor knew he shouldn’t have had beans for breakfast!
Why don’t you run a witty caption contest – it would be great as there are some real characters out there in BangShiftland!
In June of 1987 my wife and I were on a weekend road trip on my 1973 Sportster when a series of things lead to what could have been a catastrophic fire.
An oil line busted and sprayed oil everywhere, including, unbeknownst to me, on a cloth duffel bag strapped to the sissy bar. After repairing the oil line and refilling the tank we set out again and after about 30 miles I felt her squirming around back there (from the day we’d met seven years earlier until we retired from motorcycle riding four years ago, this was the only time she ever squirmed) and yelled “Hey Pete, we’re on fire back here!” I slowed down and pulled off into the grass by the side of a thankfully level road, she bailed, I bailed and purposely dumped the bike to do a quick assessment of what the #@*k was going on. The duffle bag was merely smoldering now that it was out of the wind but had been blazing and singed her nearly waist length hair. I pulled out my knife and cut the bungees holding it to the sissy bar while she started throwing dirt on it.
What happened was that the oil soaked bag slid down the bar and bared down on my el cheapo tail light causing the bulb to melt the lens and ignited the bag.
She lost a couple of inches of hair, I lost a nice duffle bag, a brand new pair of jeans and a ‘We Don’t Give A Damn How They Do It In Japan’ t-shirt.
The lessons learned were; always make sure you’ve got ALL the oil cleaned off, be sure the bag can’t move and to give a damn about how they make motorcycle tail lights in Japan.