Once More, Weird Stuff On The Road
In Oatman, AZ, you share the road with burros.
You can tell I’m either feeling lazy or uninspired–or maybe just in a humorous mood–when I fall back on this ADV thread: “What is the strangest thing you hit/almost hit?” But I am, so I must be one of those three.
So here we go once again into the wacky world of the stuff you don’t want to encounter.
- Late one night I was heading north on the 405 in Lake Forest, riding in the car pool lane. I have no idea what happened on the south side, but a car wheel came bouncing over the freeway divider and bounced not more than 10 feet in front of me. I was probably about half a mile up the road before I was able to clearly comprehend what had happened.
- Ridin’ along with a group of friends and we are bored just covering miles. We started playing “Catch” with an imaginary ball. I “Toss” the Ball to my Bud Mario and he stands up on the Pegs and “Catches” it. We were going past a golf course and he had in Reality CAUGHT a Golf BALL!
- Big wet wad of chewing tobacco right on my left shoulder with spray over my jacket and helmet. I do not like following pickups to this day. That was 40 years ago. It may have been different if it was my brand.
- Kitchen Table, between Bismark and Fargo. Car in front of me swerved and there it was….
- Riding along under the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto a couple of decades back in December after a snow, and the snowplow on the elevated section above me pushed a real nice windrow of snow off the edge of the expressway onto my lane. Got stopped, but it took awhile and I was horizontal. No injury, minor scuffing.
- Hit in chest by an exploding boat trailer tire as it passed me going the opposite direction. Ouch!
- During a group ride in the Fingerlakes region of NY a friend on a VTR ran over a squirrel, it stuck to his tire and was flung up in the air over the guy behind him only to land flat and soggy in my lap.
- Of course the scariest was the time I was following a pickup with a shell camper on it – the shell flew off and I swear it went over my head. On the other hand I believe my helmet was buried in the gas tank as I tried to hide behind the bikini fairing on the GPz550 so I didn’t actually see it go over my head – wonder how much protection that would have been?
- Meeting a smallish farm tractor, noticed it wobble and the rear wheel came off and rolled across in front of me.
- I rode through Portland just to take a look around and find a place to update my website. I was downtown in traffic, going about 30 mph lost in a strange city when a gust of wind picked up a newspaper page from the curb and wrapped it around my helmet. My thought was “oh no deadly cartoon moment!”. Coming to a stop blind in moving traffic was interesting as was the looks on the faces of people on sidewalk.
Yow! I’ll be happy to get through life without those sorts of experiences. But here’s one I did experience.
This was back in about January and I was in my car, not on a bike, but I was getting ready to go south on I-25 off of 6th Avenue. In the lane to my left just ahead of me was a pick-up with a load of logs these guys had probably spent the day cutting and trimming the limbs off. Then the tailgate gave way and almost all the logs poured out on the highway, right to my left. The guy right behind these guys was in a high-clearance four-wheel-drive and he had no choice but to go right over several of them. He was lucky he was able to.
The guys pulled over and secured the few remaining logs and took off in a hurry. I’m sure they wanted to get gone quick in case someone got hurt and they were held responsible.
So yeah, we don’t really need reminders, but do be careful out there. You never know what kind of craziness is just around the corner.
Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
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Biker Quote for Today
“Me and gravity, we are really, really good friends.” – Streetbike Tommy
Tags: objects on the road
