What is the strangest thing you hit/almost hit?

A 3/8" cable stretched across the road. It was being used as a gate and was just high enough to clear the handlebars on the Yamaha CT-1 I was riding. Let your imagination work and you'll probably see the rest of the story. Torn esauphogus, transected trachea, 4 days in intensive care.....lawsuit (successful but insufficient)........new motorcycle!

Sure. House party. I was a squid riding with no helmet, a t-shirt and tennis shoes. Left the party after drinking and smoking. Put a guy on the back who needed a ride home. Had to show off to everyone who was on the street. The cop was coming up the other way with no headlights to be stealth and maybe catch some partiers. No street lights either. I remember him being on the wrong side of the road, but...who knows. Coming around a blind turn in third gear doing about 60. I only saw him for a split second before we hit.

He was the local Sargent of the police department. I refused a blood test and held my urine for at least a couple of hours before I couldn't take it anymore and pissed like a race horse in the emergency room. They took a blood test anyways that was later ruled inadmissable in court.

When the police are involved in an accident it's standard procedure that an uninvolved law enforcement agency do the investigation (CHP, Sherriffs Dept, etc). This didn't happen. Instead, officers directly under him did the investigation and lied, saying that he had his headlights on.

I was in the hospital for a week and still have the scars on my face (the kind chicks dig). The passanger wasn't hurt as bad. He testified against me in court. My forks broke in two. The police charged me and I sued them. My Dad died when I was twelve and my "Big Brother" (from the organization) happened to be a lawyer and ex-cop. He represented me and the whole thing was a wash for both me and the police. Charges were dropped. My Mom kicked me out of the house soon thereafter. My next bike was an RD400 sqaure tank.

On a side note, I ran into some of the local cops months later at another house party. They recognized me and "roughed me up" pretty good.

I was 17 then. I'm 44 now. No "major" street accidents since.

I don't hate cops. I was a stupid little prick.

All true.

Good story!

1. Riding along outside Globe, Arizona. Early in the morning, and a small pickup truck is coming towards me. As he's about 500 yards away, I see a *folding table* levitate out of the bed, and then sweep towards the road. Only, it didn't just hit the road, it was still moving and sort of did this ground effect thing and started coming right towards me, about 1/2" off the ground. I braked hard and swirved into the breakdown lane, but the drunk bumps in the middle of the road disturbed the flight and it stopped stradling the center line. Two volts was behind me, laughing his ass off, I'm sure.

2. An ATV. This I hit. Riding the Senator highway, out of Crown King. Some ATVs come around a corner, I raise my left hand to wave, just being friendly. This causes me to drift to the left (my fault), and the second ATV dude was coming around the corner a little hot and slid towards his left (his fault). My left footpeg hit his rear wheel. Bent my footpeg and twisted my ankle. BTW: Straightening a Touratech footpeg is hard, it's still bent.

3. Beer. Riding outside of Payson, heading up on the rim, there's a pickup in front of me, with a cooler in a trailer. The trailer has little 6" tall walls, and the cooler is sliding back and forth. This looks like a bad thing, so I change lanes and accelerate to pass. Just as I'm passing, he hits a bump, the cooler flies out, hits the pavement and explodes in a shower of ice and beer. If I had waited an extra 10 seconds, there's no way I would've dodged all of it.

JC

Last nite I hit a bat and a firefly. The latter was only wounded, fatally. I had a glowin the dark green neon face shield for miles. It was like a night-light for the inside of my helmet. Oh and last year, about 10:30 at night, about 30 miles into the Chatahoochee N.F. in TN, a shopping cart in the middle of the road. Must have been 30 miles from the nearest cart corral.

I was exploring a very narrow, apparently almost-never traveled country lane in NE PA on my way to the '98 Rider magazine rally...came around a bend to find a roof taking up half the road. I stopped and looked back to see that a small barn near the edge of the adjoining property had collapsed and the roof, fairly intact, slid into the road. From the look of it, it had been that way for quite some time.

I've never hit anything bigger than a squirrel, been hit in the hand by a bat, and have had the usual close-encounters with deer, fox, 'possums (and a big turtle once) but a barn roof is definitely the strangest thing I've almost hit.

In the mid-80's, I was in Uncle Sams Sailing Club, stationed in Guantanamo Bay. In Gitmo, there lives a strange little beastie called "Land Crab". Adults are about 6" across, and tough as nails. When hit by a tire, the shells crack (obviously) becoming many-sided razor blades. Not good .... My bike at the time ('78 Kawasaki KZ750 Twin) was light enough (eh?) to bounce over most. But not all. I lost a few tires, but never really came close to the ground. In the spring, vast seas of baby crabs would migrate from the ocean, to the hills. Nothing stood in their way; not roads, not houses, nothing. Riding over these soft-shelled critters was an interesting feeling ....

Also in Cuba, a buddy and I were "testing" the upper end of the tach on his 750 Hurricane. We were on the only straight stretch of road on the base that was more than 1/2-mile long. It was early morning, and desolate. I was to make the first pass, and without doing a recon check, I saddled up to fly. I went about 1/2-mile, or so, and ahead, on the right, I see two buzzards enjoying brekky. Dead land crab; who'da thunk?

Anyway, they weren't too impressed with the high-performance whine of the big V-4, so they decided to leave for quieter quarters. One arced up and away nicely, but the other had second thoughts. He was convinced I wanted his meal, and wasn't about to let that happen. As he was curving back down to reclaim his meal, I arrived in the same airspace, running about 45, or so. I had started to slow down when I saw them, but as they began accent, I ceased my braking. Bad idea ....

He and I connected. I had enough time to put my left forearm up in front of my face as a block. He hit my forearm (they are amazingly light for a creature with a five-foot wingspan ...), and then sprung a large leak in his belly area. I don't clearly remember the actual impact, just the results. The bike quickly developed a nasty headshake (I wonder why), but as I was off the brakes, and traveling in a straight line, I was fortunate not to assume the prone position. Whew.

I came to a rapid stop in short order, dropped the kickstand, and shook like a leaf in a hurricane (cool storey, by the way PirateJohn! ) Jeff, my partner in crime, came riding down to check out the carnage. Bird #1 was long gone, but #2 was lying on the ground with his wings still outstretched. He had developed a fist-sized hole in his belly, and was leaking all manner of nasty, smelly fluids. Ick.

Jeff and I went back to the barracks to clean the bike, as I found some feathers in the fairing. And in the creases of the helmet. That explained the vile stench. Once I started cleaning, I found feathers everywhere: fairing, seat, under the seat, and in the battery box! Good Lord, that bird had exploded feathers everywhere! And not a small bit of poo, either .... nasty.

Back Stateside, I've had 4x8 sheets of plywood launch out of pick-ups, roof shingles peel elegantly off the stack on a trailer, and assorted beasties commit suicide under the tires. But haven't seen anything to tie the buzzard in a while .....

All The Gear, All The Time .... that's my motto!

but when I was out riding logging roads a couple days ago I spooked a pine grouse, It flew about 1-2 feet in front of my handlebars down the road for about 50 feet and then veered off in the scrub

The strangest thing that I ever almost hit was one of the wise men in a nativity scene on the lawn in front of the Courthouse in town. I was walking home after having tipped back a few and I saw what I thought was a sweet looking honey bent over doing something and I thought to myself "I'd hit that!" So I tiptoed up behind her and started hiking up her skirt. That's when I noticed she was either in serious need of a good Brazilian wax or else was a dude in a dress. Then I saw the baby Jesus looking up at me. I got the hell out of there. I'm pretty sure I'll be going to hell for that one.

-Mike

Wow!! That's quite the collection. :eek1

I really like your definition of assume.....another expression I'd like to put on a t-shirt.

I'm thinking soft landing ..........

Seriously, that would have scared the crap out of me. Did you see if the mattress hit someone else?

I've hit the usual array of birds and bats (and a glancing blow to the helmet from a five-gallon bucket), but a couple months ago I hit two pigeons at the same time. They were flying along parallel and suddenly turned right. One bounced off the top of the windshield and the other hit me square in the chest. He bounced around between me and the windshield for a couple seconds then exited over my right shoulder. Feathers and birdsh*t everywhere.

--RxRick

A horny emu trying to meet up with his mate in South Australia, and about a thousand 'roos on the way back from Innamincka, a one horse town I got stranded in. I had to ride back from there to Broken Hill to get back to semi-civilization and did the last stretch at night with the nasty buggers hopping alongside. WHen I got to the Hill I then hit a shedload of Victoria Bitters.

I didn't hit it (a big truck behind us did - smashed it flat), but the cheesehead sign blew off my driver ed car once at about 70 mph on the freeway. I heard it go off, and looked back in my instructor mirror just in time to see it get run over by the semi about 400 feet behind us. I bet it's one of the stranger things that driver ever hit.
The student asked if we should stop to pick it up. I said "hell no, we're not walking out onto the freeway to get that! Keep going, kid".
I always use one of the smaller size signs now - just in case.

While riding on I-80 in Sacramento, CA, I was following "Dualy" pickup in the 3rd of 4
lanes. I couldn't see much of the road ahead of the truck. The truck rolled right over a
4'x8'x2" sheet of styrofoam that was in the road. The draft created behind the truck
sucked it up to vertical right in front of me. I didn't have any time to react, and my immediate
choice was to center-punch it rather than try to go to the side and probably catch a corner of it.
But, the turbulance continued to suck the foam up and away from me. Lucky break.
I'll never know if it was the right choice.

Squidley, the early years. 1985, on my 84 Interceptor doing about a hundred on an Oklahoma backroad heading to work. Three Brahma heifers come out of the brush tails up running WFO. I center punched the last one. Fortunately, my Izod jacket and Shoe helmet took most of the damage. Too bad I had on Topsiders and no socks. I had some decent road rash on my ankles and feet.
When I took the bike to the local shop, the first thing the service writer asked was "Horse or cow?". He said he saw it all the time.:huh

today- 80 mph in the fast lane... missed it by a foot... no baby underneath...

I had a close call with, believe it or not, a kitchen sink. One of the big stainless steel ones. It fell off the back of a contractors truck in front of me.

A month or so ago, I was riding past a New York City public housing project (on Staten Island) and someone threw a kids' juice box at me from behind a parked car. It passed right in front of my face shield and hit the ground. I was fine, so I didn't think it was worth the risk (e.g., meeting a gang of kids while alone) and kept going.