Crash...

Yesterday I had quite the afternoon. I was leaving my house to go to my brother's house. I was gonna drive my car, but when I looked outside, it was too gorgeous to not ride Miss Sally. So I get ready by putting on my leathers and gloves and boots, etc. I am heading down the road, enjoying the beautiful day and I get close to the 8 on ramp. While making my right hand turn, my back tire hits an oil slick, or some reflective paint, or some sand or SOMETHING that causes my bike to slip. Now, this could have put me down right away, but I remembered my saftey course info and straightened the bike up and proceeded to hit to the brakes. Since I was in a right turn when Sally slipped, I was headed straight towards the opposite lane. I had about .5 seconds to react and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to stop in time. I had two options at this point, continue braking and hit one of the cars sitting in the opposite lane that were waiting at the stop sign (not fun), or I could crank the bars and take a dive (also not fun). I decided upon the latter. So I pull hard right on the bars and shift my weight to the right side and drop the bike. We slid on the ground and the bike ended up pinning me to the ground. We slid to a stop about 3 feet away from the cars. One of the guys in one of the cars got out and instantly helped me get the bike off me and helped me wheel it to the side of the road. I had done everything that I was trained to do and I was able to get up and dust myself off and walk away. The bike needed a little bit of TLC, but my dad and I were able to tweak most of the parts back into place and she is still ridable. I was able to "crash" correctly which means that I am able to keep riding. They say there are two types of riders: Those that have crashed, and those that will crash. I hopefully have experienced my one crash to meet those expectations. In short, I crashed, but it was with purpose (good purpose) and thanks to training, proper gear and safety classes, I walked away with a bruised leg and scraped elbow and a dinged up bike. What could have been terrible, wasn't that bad. Still scary, but all is well.