Passes & Canyons Blog

What’s the strangest thing you ever hit, or almost hit, while riding your bike? I love this thread on the Adventure Riders forum, and I’m here today with another batch of tales. Read and cringe.

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my garage door – when my ex partner put it down on me as i rode through it…

was really happy that day

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A buzzard
A Cow
A dead brown christmas tree (in August)

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I was hauling a friend on the back to get his bike and hit a concrete block in the middle of the road at about 70 mph. Shoulda seen it and all that but things happen fast. This was back in the sixties and we were not wearing helmets. The bike did a sorta flip thing and when we hit the road I landed on top of him. Here we were sliding down route 92 out of tampa at probably 65 or so and he keep yelling “get off get off.” I swear I tried my best to roll off of him but we end up getting into the median first and doing some ground gymnastics before coming to a stop.Cars stopped and we both got up and picked up the bike. Straightened the forks a little, got back on the bike and went to the hospital. He didn’t want to go but, man, he really had to. When they got done with him he looked like a mummy but other than a ton of pavement rash was okay. Bad day but he still kids me about wanting to ride him out to keep from sliding on the road myself.

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I had a close encounter with a hawk. I was riding down I-70 towards the lake of the Ozarks from St. Louis on my brand new R1100 and a hawk took flight from the median.

Damn thing hit my windshield dead center, broke through it, hit me square in the center if my helmet and knocked me onto the highway doing 70 mph. I was AGATT and glad of it. First thing that hit was my head on the pavement and I rolled I don’t know how many times before ending flat on my back and sliding off the highway.

Good thing too, an 18 wheeler ran over the bike shortly after I cleared it.

I was only bruised and sore for a month, nothing broke, nothing cut.

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Birds, yeah, birds.
Two bird stories:
1) Had a bird hit me in the chest one time and I just about dumped the bike getting off the road gasping for air. Not good.
2) Following a friend, Richard, and his wife, Miriam, up rt192 here in Pa. They were on their sidecar rig. I saw a big bird up ahead coming in from the right and darned if it didn’t hit them. Man, feathers instantly all over the place. Richard weaved back and forth a little and then pulled off the right side of the road. He jumped off the rig and ran to the sidecar. I pulled over thinking maybe his wife Miriam was hurt, got off and ran up to the rig. To my surprise Richard was laughing pretty hard and so was she. Then Miriam held up a tube of lipstick with feathers all over it. She was just fixing to put on some lipstick when the bird hit and like I said feathers were all over the place. No damage except to the bird….kinda goofy.

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A motorboat.
Night on I95 in VA. Came over a rise and there it was. Across both lanes.
How do you say SWERVE?
Missed it(!) somehow.
A couple hundred yards ahead is a car with an empty boat trailer in tow parked on the shoulder and two guys standing there apparently trying to figure out what to do next.

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A few nights ago I was riding around midtown in Manhattan. Bitterly cold, below freezing, Friday night, me with under 300 miles on my bike…perfect night for ride! Anyway, I made a left onto a side street from 5th avenue…I had the green light but noticed that there were about 3 cars in front of me, most of them honking, some yelling in unrecognizable accents…so I stood up to see what the hell was going on. Turns out some yahoo in an escalade thought it might be a good idea to stop in the middle of the street, with a green light, and just go ahead and start pissing. So he uh, zips up, and gets back in his blinged out land monster just before the light turned red. A few cars managed to get through, but I missed the light, and as I was waiting for the next one I look down and low and behold I am standing in some beefed out Jersey boy’s pee.

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I hit everything from bugs to dump trucks. I’m glad I was young when I T-boned an LTD and ran into the rear of a dumptruck.

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I was on a KLX 650 w/ my brother on a tiger in Dinosaur Nat’l Park, Yampa River bench road. an eagle hears us coming and lifts off but isn’t gaining enough elevation so it drops the HUGE rabbit that it was feasting on from about 15 feet into the air right (almost) into my windshield. A dead HUGE rabbit falling from the sky! My little bro laughed and laughed. I could see the look in the Golden Eagle’s eye!

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OK. Enough fun for now. You’ll find the other flying object posts here:
Motorcycles and Flying Objects
More Flying Object Tales
Latest Tales of Flying Object Encounters

Biker Quote for Today

Who cares? I’m riding…….

Oh man, winter is really here. It’s colder tonight than it has been since last winter. And we had a real snowfall last week.

I admit, I’m not one of the real hard core. I haven’t been on either of my bikes in almost three weeks. This weekend, however, I will be on one or both of my bikes without question as long as there isn’t ice and snow on the streets. ‘Tis the season to be opportunistic–you never know when a blizzard will strike and keep you off the bike for weeks. You have to grab the moment when you’ve got it; tomorrow can easily be too late.

And where do I ride when the weather gets bad? Well, first off, I stay down here on the flatlands. It’s a whole other climate up in the mountains. We might have 50 degrees and sunshine down here but you head up to Georgetown or Estes Park and all of a sudden it’s 25 degrees and there are patches of snow and ice in the portions of the road that are in shadow. And if there’s no snow and ice you can bet the road is covered with sand from the last snowfall. That makes for better traction in a car but it makes your motorcycle ride much more of an adventure than you would prefer.

So with the mountains ruled out, where to? Well, there’s one really nice loop that I’ve taken many times and it comes complete with your choice of biker bars to stop at for some socializing and refreshment. Going counterclockwise, I head south on US 85 to Sedalia, turn west on CO 67, go a mile and then turn south on CO 105. This is a very nice ride that takes you down to Palmer Lake, and you then reach I-25 at Monument.

Continue east on CO 105 until you get to CO 83 and head north. This takes you past Castlewood Canyon State Park, a nice stop, to Franktown, to Parker, and the back to Denver. The whole ride, if you end up back where you started, is about 90 miles.

Places to stop include the Stagecoach in Franktown, in Sedalia you’ll want to hit the Sedalia Grill, and in Palmer Lake, O’Malley’s Pub is the place to go. Black leather is definitely the fashion in these places, and the food is good, too.

If you up on the north side of town and don’t want to head all that way south, my favorite place is Jerry D’s in Dacono. Again, black leather is the fashion. You’ll feel right at home.

It has been said that winter is nature’s way of telling you to polish your bike. That may be, but it’s no reason not to get in some good riding when the weather permits.

Biker Quote for Today

Young riders pick a destination and go. Old riders pick a direction and go.

I had this song in my head and I’ve never known or been able to understand all of the words in the lyrics. So I had this sudden thought that there are probably quite a few people just like me out there, and that it could be a real service to print the lyrics.

Not that anyone who is interested can’t look them up on umpteen websites, but until now I never had. So if you have wondered but never bothered to look, and you’re here now, I just saved you the trouble.

Here they are, the words to “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf.

Words and music by Mars Bonfire
© MCA Music (BMI)

BORN TO BE WILD

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin’ with the wind
And the feelin’ that I’m under
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature’s child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild

By the way, if I’m violating any copyright restrictions by printing this I’ll gladly take this down. But considering the number of other sites out there with these lyrics posted I can’t believe it’s a terribly serious offense.

Biker Quote for Today

I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder