My First Motorcycle Crash, aka "The excursion"

I've been riding for about 10 months now and still learning and improving my skills.

This incident happened on Mount Lindesay Rd, At the South Western end of Koreelah National Park, Just East of Acacia Scrub Rd. This is located in the very North of New South Wales, Australia.
This is a rough country road , and i was there as part of a day trip down from Brisbane with the social group: Motorcycle Newbies & Seasoned Riders.

This accident happened for a number of reasons, the main one being target fixation but i'll come back to that in a moment. The second was the state of the road, which is a mess with patch upon patch upon patch and still with potholes everywhere. My spine felt like it was being smashed to dust and i was not enjoying that particular part of the trip, although i love the scenery and the roads down that way generally.

I was cornering on a narrow road with no centre lines and it was a blind bend, so i went extra wide to keep a safe space for encountering oncoming vehicles. As i was leaning into the corner i failed to avoid a ditch in the road where car tyres have pushed down and caused the road to bulge up out either side creating lumps. When my front wheel went into the depression my right peg or frame hit the lump to the right side of the ditch and this shunted me off to the left and off the road.

At this point i started fixating on the gravel and leaves directly in front of my front wheel. I actually managed to get around the bend on all this loose slippery debris, but because i was not looking to the road for a path to escape the shoulder, i remained on it until it ran out, at which point my fixation changed focus to the embankment which i then promptly went over.

The whole time i was trying to reduce speed and although i was locking up the brakes on the loose surface, i was repeatedly releasing them and trying over and over to get some grip, but the surface was just too loose.

I have had some failures and some successes with training myself to not fixate in these situations and i thought i was getting much better at it, but this incident proves i still need to keep working on it.

I'm just very lucky there were no obstacles there that did me any harm. I got away with just a throbbing ankle from kicking my bar end mirror during the dismount, which was completely healed the following day, and although at the time it just felt like one bruised knee, it was both, as the video kinda shows that i landed on a small log when i came to a stop and they were bruised for over a week. I also had some sore muscles the next day which is expected.

I was wearing safety gear which i am sure saved me from losing skin and grazing hands, elbows knees etc. I had on a textile jacket with elbow, shoulder and back protection, gloves with hard knuckle protection, a helmet of course, and fully lined kevlar jeans (although i could have done with knee pads too), i'm yet to find motorcycle shoes in my size and was wearing leather sneakers.

I hope you enjoy this video. Luckily we can all have a laugh at it as no one was badly hurt. I also hope we all take note and try to recall not to fixate when you get presented with a surprise, whatever it may be. I know i have learnt from this!

Thanks again to all the guys that helped out! And ride safe everyone.

Cletus.