Watch Out, Weird Stuff in the Road
Every now and then I dip into this well. The original question posted on the Adventure Riders forum was “What is the strangest thing you hit/almost hit?” Here are some more of the replies.
After some of the stories here I hardly feel like my skunk kills are worth mentioning, but it is important to note that if you hit them square in the head with your front tire your bike hardly moves and they die before they can spray you.
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Hit a porcupine last weekend, was fun fixing 2 flat tires on the side of the road. Used every bit of my patch kit. 11 punctures in two tires. Spent most the time pulling quills out of the tires. Porcupine walked away.
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I cut a poodle in half. No BS. I was going through the gears on a sidestreet when a poodle ran out to attack me. I was clicking into 5th on my RD400. I thought I would run it over and crash, but it just split right in two. I must have hit it just right! I felt a little bad, but there was nothing I could do.
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A railroad tie… In the middle of I-30 coming out of Texas. Totaled a full dress HD and didn’t do wife and I any good either. Superslab at 75mph is more fun to ride than slide…
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Blastin’ the Mississippi back roads on a GSXR 1000, exiting a blind sweeper at about 110, only to find an old lady on a riding lawn mower leading a goat down the middle of the blacktop. No time to brake, made the pass with at least an inch to spare.
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Riding down a country road in Southern Maryland, a bird flies out of the bushes and right into my front (spoked) wheel while I’m doing about 60. Made a sound like shuffling cards and burst into a cloud of feathers.
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Great Words of Wisdom….Don’t follow closely to a full cattle truck…and pass way wide …came up on a slow one and just I went for the pass, I swear every cow in the upper deck took a piss…and they say that smells like money.
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A 1/2″ sheet of ice as wide and long as the trailer roof on a tractor trailer. Truck is in the on ramp, sumpin told me to move to the far left of three lanes. I see the ice lift up and glide/hoover down. It hit the center lane and broke up into three or four spinning sheets, which broke up into ten or twelve spinning sheets. By the time I rode through it in the far left lane it was about 100 spinning chunks of ice.
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A box of intravenous fluids flew off the back of a truck on the highway. A box of 12, each bag 1L = 12kg at speed. I ducked to let it pass over my right shoulder. How ironic would it be to get hit by an infusion bag!
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1992 kid shot a skateboard out into the street just as I went by. I hit it, and down I went. Man was I pissed.
OK, that’s all for now. I’ll end with this bit of wisdom offered on the thread: Rule of thumb is if it’s small enough to eat in one sitting you can pretty much hit it without worrying….haven’t tested that, heard it from an MSF dude.
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