Passes & Canyons Blog

All righty, time again for the weirdest stuff bikers have hit or almost hit. As always, these adventures come from a thread on the Adventure Riders forum. We’ll dive right in.
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Back in the ’80s I was riding with a friend in Southern California. We were blitzing down a highway and he ran over a half-eaten burrito still in the bag some prick tossed out. He kicked it up with his rear tire and it slapped me in the face. I had my visor open and when I got the wet, stinky slap..it managed to come unwrapped to some degree and spray fermented bean and other assorted fillings upside my face and helmet.
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It was night, doin’ about 50 down Rt 20 with helmet and shield when I see something diving for my light, tried to duck, hit me square in the visor, liked to knocked me off the bike, blood, guts mess, I wipe away, something sharp in visor. I get back to the garage and I found the beak of what I think was a hummingbird snapped off, inbedded in the visor, and penetrated it by about 1/4 inch.
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Here in Phoenix on the I-10 I was able to barely avoid a new computer in a box that fell from the back of a truck I was following. Thankfully I tend to keep plenty of room and I was just changing lanes. The combination of the two saved my bacon. It was close, as I felt it graze my left boot.
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Four of us were riding in northern Wisconsin. We were on dual-sports in the woods on partially overgrown two-track. A black bear sprung from the brush. Stories vary if you listen to rider #3 who hit it and rider #4 who saw it about whether it came from the right or left. Regardless, the bear ran along side the cycle for a few steps then cut in front of the front tire. The bear was t-boned and somersaulted. The bike when down and the rider went over the handlebars. Rider #4 said his first thought was what he should do when the bear stood up and faced them. But the bear did immediately run off. The whole event was only 4-5 seconds.
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While competing in an observed trial recently a bee flew into my face as I was riding the loop trail. It hit perfectly between my cheek and the liner of my open face helmet and wedged itself in just below my right ear. Not only was it stinging me repeatedly but the sound of an angry bee inside my helmet right by my ear was nearly deafening. As I was approaching the next section I stepped off my still moving bike and pulled my helmet off, threw it down wile swatting alongside my head and swearing loudly. The observer probably thought I was having a flashback to a bad acid trip.
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I was behind a moving caravan (weekend drunken buddies in multiple trucks) when the tail gate came down dumping the items from the bed into my path. I was far enough behind to have plenty of time and watch the entertainment as the lawnmower came rolling out…followed by the dryer…..followed by the chest of drawers…….
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Turkey in flight. I followed it down a dirt road at 20 miles an hour, for nearly 50 yards, right on its tail feathers. They should stick to walking, they can’t fly for shit.
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This morning I missed going thru a gaggle of geese. There must have been 50 crossing geese crossing the road 3 to 4 deep. I came around the curve at 70 mph and there they were. I went thru them, but missed hitting any of them. They scattered around and went on off the road before anything else happened.
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I was hauling ass down a fire road in my younger days, just about to run over a yucca stalk when it started wiggling. It was a friggin 6′ rattlesnake sunning itself on the road.
I don’t think I helped it any hitting it square in the middle but I didn’t stop to ask if he was OK.
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Scored a double point bonus last week in Waco. I was coming down the road next to the Dr. Pepper Museum when a squirrel and a pursuing angry sparrow came right in my path. I hit both at the same time. Sparrow bounced off, and continued to fly, squirrel not so lucky.
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One moonless night I wast east bound on Texas 290 just outside Houston. There it is a two lane with median barrier and brand new. A truck was stopped on the right shoulder with its back up lights on. I was in the right lane clipping along at my usuall 80 MPH and moved into the left lane to give a wide berth. Suddenly I realized they were stopped because they had just dropped a dark blue love seat in the middle of the left lane. I dropped anchor and was able to serve around the thing but it was close.

If you will notice, there is always a bunch of trash on the road around the end of the month. This is because this is when people move themselves from one residence to another.
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Riding down through Pennsylvania to visit a friend in Bethlehem, a loud ‘thwack’ announced the impact of a firefly on my face shield, then two more. I shut the lights off for a moment to confirm that the green glowing effect all over my field of vision was not a hallucination.
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Here are the other flying object posts:
Motorcycles and Flying Objects
More Flying Object Tales
Latest Tales of Flying Object Encounters
Even More Tales of Flying Objects
Look! Up in the Sky! More Flying Object Tales
Did You See What I Almost Hit?

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Motorcycle rides retracing vanished highways

Biker Quote for Today

In the end, it’s all about the stories.

How hard is it to go on after losing a leg in a crash when all you did wrong was to take your eyes off the oncoming car for an instant to check the cross traffic? That was essentially the question I asked Randy and Joan Savely while speaking with them for the series of articles I just posted on Examiner.com.

What I seem to be doing with some regularity lately is working on a story for Examiner and then giving you the background here. That’s definitely the case now.

I met Randy when I joined ABATE earlier this year. I’m in District 10 and Randy is the district rep, which is to say, he runs the meetings. It didn’t take me long to notice that Randy was missing his left leg from the knee down.

One reason I like going on poker runs, going to ABATE meetings, and getting involved in other motorcycle-related activities is that every time I go somewhere I come home with new story ideas. That’s a good thing considering that I write a minimum of five articles every week, frequently more. I smelled a story in Randy.

First, let me make it clear that this is definitely their story, Randy and Joan’s, not just his. When I first proposed the story idea it was Joan who replied that the two of them would be happy to speak with me. Up until then I had been thinking solely of Randy, but it soon became very clear to me that this was indeed their story.

What I hadn’t counted on was how powerfully their story would hit me. I met with them two weeks ago today, expecting to spend less than an hour in the interview. Going on two hours I finally said we ought to stop because there was only so much that a reader will read.

The next day Judy and I left on vacation for a week and on the drive to Utah it was practically the only thing I could speak of. And this was after spending hours telling her about it the night before. The lead sentences quickly formed in my mind and they made it into the story unaltered, even though I never wrote the rest of it until 10 days later:

When everything finally came to a stop, Randy Savely sat up, thinking, “Well, I’m alive.”
A couple moments later he noticed his boot laying in the middle of the intersection.
“That boot don’t come off,” he thought. Then he turned to the driver who had hit him and asked for his belt to use as a tourniquet on his leg.

For two weeks now this story has haunted me (not in a bad way) and has been in my mind almost constantly. Not out of some fear that it could happen to me, that’s not it at all. Probably a lot of it is Randy. Can you imagine having your leg removed by a car and having the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on yourself?

A funny thing there: I asked Randy if he was wearing a helmet and whether he had any head injuries. No and no. But he told me that he really believes in chaps more than helmets because it was the fact that he was wearing chaps that enabled him to tend to his own needs. They covered up the fact that his foot was gone, whereas seeing a bloody stump may well have shaken him up enough to go into shock.

I could go on and on. As I said, this story has haunted me for two weeks. But I won’t. Go read it yourself. It’s not that I’m such a great writer, it’s that their story is an incredible story. I just can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to tell it.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Broken wings: When a biker goes down hard

Biker Quote for Today

Live every day as though it was your last, but ride to make sure it’s not!

Do what you love and the money will follow.

Have you ever heard those words? Do you believe them? Well, I’m putting them to the test. First some background.

I’ve been a writer all my life, and I’ve been riding motorcycles for more than 20 years. That doesn’t count the numerous times when I was a kid when I had the occasional chance to ride. By 20 years I mean since I bought my first bike. So what could be more natural than to put the two together?

OK, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve been in the newspaper business and various other lines of work but the one thing they all had in common was that I was a writer. Most recently I’ve been doing contract work as a technical writer. On my most recent gig I knew first of all that it would end. That’s the nature of the beast. I also knew the economy was in the toilet and that getting the next gig could be very difficult. So I put aside as much cash as I could while I had the income and when the end came I was ready.

I’ve been “unemployed” for a couple months now but I’m working harder than ever. But no, I’m not looking for a job. I’m working to make a living as a biker.

First off, I’ve turned my gig at Examiner.com into an almost full-time effort, and as of yesterday I’ve moved from Denver Motorcycle Examiner to National Motorcycle Examiner. Second, I’m doing what I can to make more money off this website. I’ve always had the Google ads, and they’ve always paid enough to support the website without me having to dip into my pocket just to pay the hosting fees. But now I’m actively trying to sell ads on the site, which has the potential to provide serious income. We’ll see.

Third, I’ve been talking with Dan Patino at Monkey Gripper Motorcycle Tours about working for him this summer as a motorcycle tour guide. Considering the focus of this website, that seems a perfect fit. Now all we need is for the economy not to totally crush the tourism industry and to get some people signed up for tours.

And fourth, I’m considering the possibility of becoming a motorcycle riding instructor. To that end, just this weekend I took the Beginning Rider Course from T3RG Motorcycle Schools. The possibility of becoming an instructor was really only one of four reasons I had for taking the course, but because the course is required if you want to be an instructor, it was fortuitous to be able to do so just at this time.

So we’ll see. I’m doing what I love and while I’m not making nearly enough to live on so far, things do seem to be moving in the right direction.

And doors do seem to be opening up. For instance, in my work with Examiner.com I have helped build a group of the motorcycle Examiners around the country. We try to coordinate our efforts and work together whenever the opportunity presents itself. Well, there is a new East Bay Motorcycle Examiner who just started, Gabe Ets-Hokin, who just today posted his second ever post, which is part two of his introduction. It turns out to my extreme interest that he has been a motojournalist since 2004 and is currently the Online Editor for Cycle World magazine. Holy smokes! I now have a contact with an outfit I’d love to become involved with. It may never happen but you never know.

Rest assured, I’ll keep you up to date on how this progresses. I’m not saying you should be all that interested in how I make my living, but I would think just about anyone would be interested to see whether you really can do what you love and end up making it your job. Who knows, it might be the inspiration someone else needs to do so as well.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Emotional day ends Run For The Wall

Biker Quote for Today

You can forget what you do for a living when your knees are in the breeze.

Riding motorcycles as I have for more than 20 years you’re guaranteed to learn a few things, mainly by direct experience. I recently concluded a series of 12 posts on Motorcycling Lessons Learned on Examiner.com and now I’ve put these all together as a booklet that you can download.

For the most part, I was able to use real-life situations that my buddies and I have experienced to show the value of these lessons. Not incidentally, I don’t always look so smart in these situations, but that’s how you really, truly learn a lesson. I’m fine with you laughing at my stupidity if it gets the point across.

Just so you’ll know in advance what you’re getting, here are the titles and links to the individual posts on Examiner.

#1 – Have riding buddies
#2 – Signal your intentions
#3 – Ride your own ride
#4 – Don’t hesitate to ride alone
#5 – Carry proper gear
#6 – Know your bike
#7 – Get training
#8 – Assume you’re invisible
#9 – Take your time
#10 – Explore
#11 – Be opportunistic
#12 – Know how to pick up your motorcycle

Biker Quote for Today

It’s a friggen motorcycle, it’s not supposed to be comfortable, quiet, or safe. The wind noise is supposed to hurt your ears, the seat should be hard, and riding it should make you shit your pants every now and then. Suck it up.

My all-time favorite motorcycle forum thread is the one on Adventure Riders where people tell about the bizarre things they hit or almost hit while on their bikes. Let’s see what new stories have been added recently.

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The worst crash I ever had on asphalt was from a head on at highway speed with a diving owl. I went right over the back for a long tumble/slide into the ditch. That was followed by riding a very bent bike to the ER to deal with the beak hole in my chest that it left THROUGH my snow mobile suit. Birds are no joke. Hate that movie.

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Well I tagged a Blackbird today, it did not seem very hard and I carried on my merry way, when I got home a friend was waiting for me, “What have you hit?” he asked “Why” “You have blood and guts all over the bike” and on me too, there were bits of meat dropping off me, oh well at least it did not suffer any pain, glad it wasn’t any bigger.

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Yesterday my bud and I rode to Canyonlands NP and back home, about a 300 mile day. Winds kicked up really strong on the way home, like 35 gusting to 50. We slowed down after coming around a corner to find a sand dune had formed a foot deep clear across our lane. An hour later, I saw this weirdness ahead. An entire irrigation sideroll had come loose and was rolling toward us!

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Fellow I know and was rooming with – riding a long distance motorcycle rally: Riding down the super slab at night, he was dangling his feet from his ST1100, to relieve leg cramps. Suddenly, WHAM, his foot is hit by something on the pavement. Stopping to evaluate, he notices porcupine quills spiked in to his riding boots.

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Almost collected a bighorn in the Big Bend country as I crested a hill on a blind curve. He kicked a lot of rocks onto the road (a mini-landslide) as he scrambled up the hillside, causing a small lumo in my throat as I negotiated the curve. Definitely an “almost ouch”!

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A boulder rolling down a hill on highway 20 going towards Truckee. It was travelling in a straight line right in the middle of the lane, going about 20mph. It was huge, I was afraid to pass it in case it took a wierd wobble and crushed me. I followed it for at least a quarter mile before it went off the side.

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a baby doll wraped in a blanket. For a second I thought it was a real baby.

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Coming back from the poverty riders ” mo bottom” rally last year I had a buzzard take off from the roadside as I approached. He flew right over the white side line till I got even with him then banked hard and kamakzied into my front wheel. Knocked me into the other lane but no crash.

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While riding through the East Bay this week, a chicken committed suicide by running into the side of my bike. My friend, riding behind me, said he didn’t see thing until the chicken exploded. I didn’t see it, but there were chicken feathers stuck to the bottom of the bike.

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Hit a bat once, about 35 mph, in the hours just before it got way too dark. He was quite surprised about it too. And yet hung on to my jacket for a good minute or two.

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Several hundred honey bees. I was riding about 35 mph on a street near the San Diego Zoo when I ran through the swarm. Within seconds my my jacket, pants, face shield, gloves, everything were coated with bees. That was when I found out swarming bees don’t sting (luckily). If they had been the African variety it would have been life-threatening instead of just unusual.

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Hit an Elk at 45 with a Colorado State Patrol right behind me. Tucked the front under him and broke its legs. That one hurt.
Hit an Extension ladder on the 280 in Cali (San Jose). Talk about Hangtime!

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couple of years ago…. large sheet of painters plastic in the highway, kicked up just perfectly by a cage in front of me. Hung there like a shower curtain as I plowed right into it. Had to move over three lanes blindly, through traffic, to get to the right hand shoulder and stop so I could peel it off of me and the bike

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Yow! My encounters have been pretty tame compared to those. That’s fine with me.

Here are the other flying object posts:
Motorcycles and Flying Objects
More Flying Object Tales
Latest Tales of Flying Object Encounters
Even More Tales of Flying Objects
Look! Up in the Sky! More Flying Object Tales

Biker Quote for Today

Murphy is alive and well, living in my saddlebags, and waiting for an opportunity to kill me.

If you’re figuring that Ride Your Motorcycle to Work Day is set for the third Wednesday in July as always, here’s an alert. It’s not. It has been changed.

In fact, it’s not even being called “Ride Your Motorcycle to Work Day.” It is now just “Ride to Work Day,” and it has been moved to the third Monday in June. That’s June 15 this year.

The name change has been made to make the event more inclusive, encouraging scooter riders to join in as well. The date change is intended to take advantage of more moderate weather. The event has also taken on an international scope and in Europe, July is often vacation time for a large number of people.

Additionally, the organizers hope that a Monday event will encourage riders to commute on two wheels all week, rather than just one day. And finally, because Sunday is usually a slow news day, it is hoped that a Monday event will garner more media advance coverage.

In case you’re not familiar with Ride to Work Day, the purpose is to demonstrate:

• The number of motorcyclists to the general public and to politicians.
• That motorcyclists are from all occupations and all walks of life.
• That motorcyclists can reduce traffic and parking congestion in large cities.
• That motorcycles are for transportation as well as recreation.
• That motorcycling is a social good.

So I hope to see you on the road June 15.

Biker Quote for Today

No matter what marque you ride, it’s all the same wind.

An angry face is staring right at you; do you notice it? You bet you do.

What if you’re driving in your car and the angry face is the front end of a motorcycle that you’re just about to turn in front of? Do you see it and stop your turn? Apparently there is a good chance you will.

Time for a paradigm switch perhaps. “Loud pipes save lives” may soon become “Pissed off bikes protect riders.”

What the heck am I talking about? I ran across this article about how Honda researchers are finding that the more a bike looks like a human face, and in particular an angry human face, the more likely it is that other drivers will see it. So they’re starting to deliberately make bikes look more human–and angry.

So welcome to the future. Let’s hear it for pissed-off bikes!

Biker Quote for Today

“I don’t give it a name, but I always speak with it. I don’t know if other riders do the same. This is not only a piece of metal – there is a soul” -Valentino Rossi

This is a sponsored post from Robert Reeves, an experienced motorcycle accident lawyer who can help individuals with their legal troubles if they have been personally injured on their motorcycle.

I owe this heads-up to Fasthair, who, in response to my post asking “Why Are All These Bikers Dying?,” sent me the link I’ll give you momentarily.

I’ve mentioned here a couple times now that a new motorcycle crash study has gotten underway to update and tell us more about this subject than the 30-year-old Hurt Study can do. What I had not heard is that due to funding issues, it is currently dead in the water.

The study is to be conducted by Dr. Samir Ahmed, who is a researcher in the Transportation Center at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Federal matching money was put up with privately raised money and theoretically the study was underway. I reported previously that selected intersections in Los Angeles were being equipped with recording and sensing devices so as to gather crash information, and it looked like things were rolling.

Not so. As Jeff Cobb with Motorcycle Safety News reports, Dr. Ahmed cannot move forward with the study because Alan Tree, associate dean for research at OSU’s College of Engineers, Architects and Technology, is concerned that there is not enough money, and that his department would be forced to make up the difference if the project ran out of cash before the job was done.

All in all a very distressing situation that Jeff Cobb explains in detail.

Another comment on the same post came from Torch, who said in regard to the questions I was raising, “Very good questions. We could use a compiled list of frequent mistakes, what to watch for, and how to avoid those situations.”

Well, as I noted in that post, I see an unending stream of headlines about biker accidents and deaths, so in the last week I have kept track of them all. The following list is representative but not all-inclusive. I follow the headline with the explanation from the article that tells the story.

• 1 Killed, 2 Hurt in Motorcycle Crashes — motorcycle rider tried to veer in front of another vehicle but instead impacted the front bumper of the car/veered in front of another motorcycle; motorcycle rider had been racing
• Buddy Lee Cole injured in motorcycle-truck crash — truck turned in front of him
• Motorcycle driver dies after colliding with backhoe — driver of a backhoe failed to yield while turning
• Rogersville Man Injured When Motorcycle Flips — riding veered off Lonesome Pine Trail and flipped – lost control of the motorcycle after swerving to avoid a white car that he encountered on his side of the road in a curve
• Lafayette Motorcycle Accident Kills One — collision with a van traveling southbound who turned into its path
• Motorcycles Hit 18-Wheeler; Both Riders Injured — struck an 18-wheeler whose driver failed to stop at a stop sign
• Motorcycle wrecks claims life of Raleigh man — ran into a Jeep, speeding
• 3 die in separate biker accidents Saturday — rear-ended by a pickup’s driver; lost control
• Two killed in motorcycle crash — hit head-on by a minivan (that crossed center line)
• Motorcycle crash kills Repton man — lost control of his motorcycle
• Motorcycle accident in southeast Huntsville — lost control of his bike and ran into a deep ditch
• Tecumseh woman killed in motorcycle crash — crashed into the rear of a van
• Madison County man dies in motorcycle accident — entered Quarterline Road into the path of a southbound Jeep
• Biker dies after city crash — collided with a blue Toyota Carina which was trying to perform a U-turn
• One Dead After Motorcycle Crash — rear-ended rider
• Wister man killed after crashing motorcycle into wooden post in LeFlore County — running his motorcyle off a LeFlore County road and crashing into a wooden post
• Fatal Motorcycle Crash in Dallas — speed may have caused him to lose control and slam into a wall

OK, that’s enough. Mind you, that’s only about half of what I collected in one week, pretty much in chronological order. What do we see there?

We see several of the accidents we all know occur, where a driver turns left in front of a bike. The surprising thing we see is that many of them do not involve any other vehicles, they are just cases of bikers who lose control and hit something. In a couple other cases the biker rear-ended someone else.

In other words, it is easy for us to say it’s “those damn cagers” who are killing us but at least in the last week it’s really more that we are killing ourselves. Was alcohol involved? In some cases, probably. Excessive speed was definitely involved in some. These are factors we have absolute control over.

I don’t know about you, but I love riding my bikes. As soon as I die, the fun is over. What choices are you going to make today?

Biker Quote for Today

If you want to get somewhere before sundown, you can’t stop at every tavern.