I realize this post will likely create a lot of questions about what happened. I’m not a linear kind of guy when telling the story of a five-day dualsport motorcycle trip. I don’t keep a journal when I am out on the road. When you are riding in a large group (7 on this last trip), you go with the flow. I use my iPhone camera to snap some images that will help me remember the moments out on the road, and the places we have been. Then I piece the story back together in chunks that sometimes all fit together, never neatly. This post is about the Touratech Zega-Pro anodized black cases that I installed on the bike a few months ago. This was the first trip where I had them loaded to the gills. As you can see from the photos below, they got a little banged up on this trip. I learned an important lesson. Some would say a rookie mistake. When your bike is loaded up with 75 to 100 pounds of gear, the suspension handles quite differently when you are in rough terrain. That’s all I’ll say about the cause part of the cause-and-effect. This post is about the effect. The right side took quite a bashing. The pannier rack deformed enough that the box was pinching against my gas tank, but the box didn’t come off. The box itself was dented in the rear and the side, but later that night in the City of Rocks campground, my mates helped me bang it out with a two-by-four. We also took the rack off and did some blacksmithing to bend it back to the point were it wasn’t hitting my gas tank. Unfortunately there were a few cracks in the welds, so at least the right side rack will need to be replaced. The whole assembly did a lot to prevent my bike from serious damage. Check it out:

Direct side view of the right side box, post incident.

View of the box from the back. Ouch.

Walking it off after eating it in the ditch.