What is the strangest thing you hit/almost hit?

A bird falling out of the sky having just been hit by a CBX.:eek1

Crabs, the size of small dinner plates, crossing the Keys Highway north to south in herds.

Who cares whether someone assumed or whether he saw you or not.

I would have laughed if I was watching the event and instead he saw you coming, and when you pass him in his own lane, he knocks you off your bike for doing it.

You ride iron butt and you ride like that? wow...

And I thought ADVriders were good riders...

There outta be a separate thread on the riding bastardization of passing riders in their own lane...

I was riding with some friends in Baja on the 950. We were about 20 miles outside of Tecate in a national park of some kind. Came around a bend and there was a dead cow in the trail, with the insides all eaten. Then I had an encounter with this thing. I wish I could say that I sort of wheelied over it. But I more or less just swerved and was lucky I didn't dump the bike in the adjacent streambed. We named the beast a Squougar because it looked like the offspring of a squirrel and a cougar. Needless to say, it was weird.

in Oz Rubbed a three ft tall roo with my front tire... but the wierest was a barbri doll thrown out of a SUV by some evil kid... missed me by a foot or two... was kinda funny in retrospects...

A week ago or so I rode right past a full size two bowl kitchen sink complete with faucet. If I hadn't been paying attention, it would have been easy to tag it.

near miss ( 8' or so) w/ a black bear, on the ridge road above Roslyn Wa, coal pits. doing 40mph off road, cresting a hill, small jump, then full lock slide. 'bout shit myself. luckily it startled him and he ran, instead of attacking.

some of you guys should of bought a lotto ticket, damn your lucky

An airplane making an emergeny landing. :eek1

In the early 80s on my BMW 80/7. A bit north of Threeways, Northern Territory, Australia.

A wedgetail eagle (these things can have a 6 ft wingspan) feeding on roadkill on the side of the road was not going to move until the last minute and I was doing 120kmh (75mph). It slowly started to move but was so heavy it was climbing very slowly. I had to duck down onto the tank to miss it. It would have taken me off the back of the bike had I hit it.

Heading east from Darwin towards Kakadu national park a kangaroo on the hop hit me directly in the middle of the front axle. The front end went up in the air the bike went into a tank slapper on hitting the road . I was able to control it and on stopping found that the `roo was dead but there was a small hairless joey (baby `roo) alive on the ground. Not being able to do much more I killed the joey and moved the `roo off the road and continued on my way.
If the `roo had have hit the bike a couple of inches forward or back she would have taken the front end out from under me and I would have crashed.

David Hunn

Guess I've been lucky, as I've not come close to hitting anything as fancy as some of the stories in this thread (ball lightning... sheeeeeeesh!!!:eek1 ). I've seen my share of tires come off trucks, mattresses fly off of pick-ups, etc..., and sundry crap in the road, but I've never come close to hitting them. But I darn near ran over a big turtle on a country road in Oklahoma a few weeks ago. It was walking right to left on the left side of my lane where I was riding. It was a big ole' turtle with a shell 18" or so in diameter. I swerved pretty hard to miss it.

Coming home from work one day on the highway. Ford pickup truck in front of me about 5 car lengths. All of a sudden the spare tire slowly ejects from under the rear of the truck. I kid you not it looked like the thing was wired to eject at a push of the button. Driver had no clue he lost it. So I stay calm as the tire is skidding along on its side down the road in front of me. No problem I think, I will simply get over one lane to the left and go around this smoking rubber donut. Nope, car holding me in. Then the damn thing stood up right and started really getting crazy and of course accelerating my direction. Panic set in because the thing was getting wobbly and I knew it was seconds from getting airborne. Finally the car next to me seeing the story line about to unfold slams on his brakes and waves me over. After I was safely out of that lane I could see the tire bouncing all over the place in the rearviews. Whew! Amazing how a simple ride home can get the ole heart racing.

Ride safe.

That needs elaboration.

Nothing too dramatic here, just the usual detrius in the road, deer, dogs, smaller mammals, birds, etc.

#1. Buzzard outside Mazatlan. That sucker was having brunch on the side of the road, got spooked, flapped off and turned and almost flew right into me. He/she was close enough that I felt the wings brushing the right side of my helmet.

#2. Missed getting hit by a tire that came off a car carrier by, oh ... maybe a foot or two. It bounced along on my side of I-4, jumped the median, hit the car in the following photo, that car punted it sky high, and as I was watching it make this slow and graceful fall back down to Earth I realized that it was COMING RIGHT AT ME!

#3. And then there was the time that I got 3 paragraphs in the Miami newspaper for being stoopid enuf to try and ride out of the Florida Keys with a hurricane approaching. You just don't know fun until you have ridden across the Seven Mile Bridge in a gale. Story at http://www.buccaneerpublishing.com/michelle.htm

Here's the car that got hit with that tire. Notice that the windshield pillar actually got hit. When I saw it hit the driver's side and blow all of the glass out of the side windows I thought that I was witnessing a fatal accident.

A full box load of 2 inch white plastic pipe fittings fell out of a truck directly in front of me. Wouldn't have been too bad if the box had stayed shut, but it popped open and with more luck than skill I threaded the mine field of dancing plastic at 75 mph on I-90 without touching a one.

Chest of drawers. Fortunately I was about 6 car lengths behind the pick-up.

Lots of splinters and chunks of hardwood fly by in a flash.

Only was grazed by a small piece of wood.

1) Barely missed hitting an old Car hood on I-4 at 3AM
(looked like a 53' chevy)

2) Narrowly missed a cat which jumped (or was thrown)
into heavy traffic near Tampa

3) and then there's the bobcats, foxes, and gators near Ocala.

ogg

Head on collison. RD350. 27 years ago. Went through his windshield, my head broke his arm. True story.

dude... woah... 'splain that one...


only other wierd story---was '99 riding in Custer Nat'l Park... road up the Needles about 7am, since all the Sturgis drunks were still asleep....

Got to the top, kicked the ole bike to neutral, turned off the ignition and coasted all the way down..

was nearing the bottom, running 30-35... if you've been there you kknow there are plenty of bliind turns there..

well I go around a turn, and right THERE on the shoulder , ass out towards me, is a big bull buffalo. taking a dump.. well, he's finishing his dump, and he's turnning LEFT but obviously can't see around his big ass..

RIGHT as I realize what I'm seeing, he gets his head around, and is halfway in my right lane. And he sees me.

he sharts the rest of his breakfast---scared him silly. and stepped back a 1/2 step into the ditch.

of course i'm going hard left as possible, with my own arse firmly clenching the seat... I onlly missed his head by inches....

I never figured out if it scared him or me most...

Was riding to work at 4 AM on the Dakar when I saw something on the side of the road, similar to a fire hydrant. I got about14 feet away when the reflective eyes of this huge hawk caught my attention. Before I could even think the hawk took flight and was about4 feet from my windscreen at full wingspan to rose off to the left. An instant jolt of fear shocked my body but then I was amazed!

I was at the 99 Isle of Man to watch the TT races and went out for a 06:30 am lap of the circuit. The "circuit" is 37.5 miles of public roads and in various sections has no speed limit. One of my favourite sections is a set of sweeping bends called quarry bends. I took my fireblade round them at around 100 and then approaching another rider and a bend ahead that leads into a 40 mph limit I rolled off thinking to myself just coast round the corner pass him as we go into the 40 limit and then I will be in front as we come out of the limit. As we tip into the left hander with him in the middle of the lane and me behind and to his right I see a headlamp coming towards us in the middle of the road. It then swerves to the inside of our lane and strikes the left hand side of the guy in front. I swerve into the other side of the road and brake like hell to avoid the debris.

Amazingly the everyone stayed upright. The guy who got hit received a bad hit to the hand but apart from a smashed up left side of the bike he was ok.

The cause of all this?

A German riding a BMW r1100s who when I asked what the phuque he thought he was doing said " I only rode 100 - 200 yards on the wrong side of the road"

"ONLY I screamed whats your FUC*ING record!!!"

Turns out he was going home that day and thought he was already there! All over the island during TT week they put signs up saying Links Faren Bitter which means keep left please. They even stick it on German bike petrol tanks. That was too close to being the last ride.

Ball lightning gets my vote. Especially the guy who gave it the right of way!

Take care out there folks

FBS