I usually drive a Kawasaki ZZR sportsbike to work everyday. Since its the rainy season with heavy flooding (up to 4 feet in flood waters in some areas), I've been using my 125cc dirt bike to work (has a higher road clearance than the sportsbike). Unfortunately, motorcycles with an engine displacement of less than 400cc are not allowed on the (much safer) tollways (expressway/superhighways/etc) so I had to take the more narrow old roads which goes through every municipality and city between Cavite and Makati (75km).
Well, this morning, on the way to work I was part of big "convoy" of bikes in Las Pinas (we didn't know each other, these convoys just happens and essentially melts away on the next major intersection). The leader of the pack was driving this small but agile Suzuki Raider 150cc (it's an underbone and the preferred type of motorcycle here) and I was third in the group. We were weaving through traffic by splitting lanes when the bus infront of us stopped. The reaction of the pack leader was to counter flow (it was only a two lane road) to overtake the stopped bus. Everyone in the pack followed and as he was clearing the bus, a kid around 8 to 10 years old suddenly showed up running right into the middle of the bike. It was a submarine T-Hit and the kid was spun around and fell to the ground with the bike snaking along for a few seconds and falling over. Everyone emergency breaked and the bike behind me actually ploughed into me (it's not bad, just jarred me a little). I was shocked and of course people started running towards the incident and somebody picked up both the downed rider and the kid and there was general commotion. I'm now in the office and I still kept thinking about it. Had I been more aggressive this morning ... I would have been the pack leader and it would have been me which the kid ran blindly into. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
