1st minor mistake, skiding the rear wheel.
1st big mistake, letting off the rear brake.

And did they complain about the amount of skin saved?

I change tires twice a year.  And this is going to be on the list of things to do when I decide to change the tire.

I'm don't think I am the best person to teach any lessons.  I have been riding streets for less then 6 years but got my first dirt bike about 26 years ago.  I feel pretty comfortable without training wheels - but I'm no expert.  

The best way to avoid a highside is not to lock up the brakes.  As a habit, I don't use much back brake and I don't have any reason to believe I stomped them during this but I couldn't swear that I didn't.  The whole thing took a few seconds.

It was a fairly sharp rh turn that also dropped downhill.  It was also sandy - which doesn't help traction.  I have driven that road hundreds of times and my speed was very reasonable for the turn - except for the car stopped in the middle of it.  It's not a turn you can see through.  I guess I could have been going slower but then I'd be driving everywhere 10 mph under the limit and that doesn't sound very fun.  The jacket was a mesh and armored, no gloves and no hand damage except or the bone.  I did find some scratches to the face shield and forehead of the helmet.  I don't think I landed face down, probably hit while rolling.  

The only thing that does jump out at me is the number of things going on.  Sharp, downhill turn, narrow road, car stopped in my lane, oncoming car in other lane, people on the left side of road, no right shoulder (just trees and rocks). I'm a pretty fast thinker but I think there may have been too much to compute, no easy escape, and what came out in my reactions (cause there is not really time to think things through) was simply STOP.  And that just didn't work out as well as I would have liked.

I am going to attempt to add some pics.

Ride easy...

  I use the rear brake most of the time,then the front brake,I know everyone says its wrong but it seems right to me,I do the same thing on my 21 speed bicycle that I ride 5 miles every day unless its raining,But I don't lock it up and neither do I lock up car brakes. I'm 70 years young but on my grandkids wii game I come out 35 years old,Thats  less than my 4 kids do.

gerald.hughes wrote on 05/16/09 at 14:04:39:

Locking the rear brake is a very dangerous thing.  The fallacy with MSF is that they don't have the rider use the front brake at the same time as we'd do in a real situation.  When the front is braked the bike's weight shifts to the front.  This lightens the rear and makes it skid more readily.  The lightened rear, while skidding, has less traction than the front, so the rear tries to get in front.  If there is any left/right imbalance in the bike's load, or any camber of the road, or any amount of turn in the front, you've lowsided.  If you release the rear brake while going sideways, you've highsided.  Either way, you're both down and sliding faster than if you'd stayed upright with neither brake locked but braking at the max.  If you hit something, you're moving faster and hit harder if you're sliding than if you're on rubber tires braking at their max without skidding.  Leather, denim, steel, plastic, bloody skin all slide faster on pavement than rubber.

bill67 wrote on 05/16/09 at 18:08:47:

Very wrong.  On both the bicycle and the motorcycle you have much more braking effort available from the front.  The old tale getting thrown over the handlebars has more validity on a bicycle with its light weight and high center of gravity, but even there the weight transfer to the front combined with modern tire rubber gives much more safe braking capacity on the front rather than the rear.

There is no doubt with motorcycles.  The combination of the cycle's low center of gravity and weight makes getting thrown over the handlebars (a stoppie) almost impossible unless one gets the bike bouncing on purpose first.  Use the front brake hard, as hard as needed.  Use the rear brake moderately hard at first and ease off it as the bike slows and the rear tire gets easier to skid.

On slippery surfaces we want to use both brakes about 50-50 (however we'd judge that???) and just ride more cautiously in the first place.

  I've never locked the back brake in 38 years and I don't intend too,Also never went down.Every one knows you don't stop as fast if you lock the brakes.

I didn't know what a highside was until I read the description a few posts above. That's something like what happened to me a few days ago, although I was fortunate enough to avoid a fall or crash.

I had been riding in fairly heavy traffic on a 2-lane highway at ~ 50 MPH. There was a pickup in front of me about 50 feet that was tailgating a car in front of him. Another pickup was tailgating me, and I usually slow down to get tailgaters to pass in instances like this, but this being rush hour,  the guy behind me had no break in oncoming traffic that would allow him to get around me.

Traffic being what it was, I had to keep a close eye on the guy behind me in my mirrors while making sure that everything in front of me was OK... it wasn't. The pickup in front of me braked strongly to avoid slamming into the car in front of him that had stopped to make a left hand turn WITHOUT using his turn signal.  As I changed my sight from the tailgater in my mirror to the driver in front of me, I saw that my 40 foot margin was down to about 25 so I went into a panic stop by applying the rear brake first, then the front. There must have been a little bit of moisture on the road because my rear wheel was coming around on me — almost to the point of being perpendicular to the side of the road. I knew that if I fell, I ran the risk of being run over by the guy behind me, so I did what runs contrary to the advice above and released the brakes. With the pickup in front of me now at a dead stop with my MC now down to ~35, I was fortunate enough to have the room on the right to get past him and the car in front of him without hitting the curb.

marshall13 wrote on 05/17/09 at 11:33:13:

I'll have to wait until palsy sets in before I can do that.  Not likely in my family.  We tend towards alzheimers, so I'll just forget about braking and drive around... wait a minute!  that's what I'm doing now.