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A piece of landscaping timber... at 80mph

Kept the bike up bike upright (gyroscopic force!) but the impact bent and CRACKED my front rim, letting the air out of the tire.

The story is my most recent entry the end of my "Rockster blog": viewtopic.php?t=10290

P

apart from almost running into a black bear a couple of years back, the scariest close call I had was when I just started riding, was flying down the highway, well flying as well as a Honda CM400 can hauling a 200 lbs rider about and a sheet of plywood flew loose from the back of the pick up truck I was behind, had to brake hard, again as hard as it is possible for a Honda CM400 with only drum brakes can brake and rode onto the grass meridian.

It was brown trousers time.......

I'm in thailand (but American), and leaving a village, I hit a medium sized dog. The rule here is to hit the dog and maintin control. We aren't going to lock up our brakes or swerve into greater peril just to miss a dog. There are so many dogs in the roads here we don;t even stop for them anymore after we hit them.

Thailand has some of the best biker roads in the world, so come visit us someday. We have a "Home-Stay" ($20/day incl. meals) and I will take you on some great rides.

xlineshooter

I'll throw in a squirrel story from a couple of months ago. So it was not WHAT I hit that was unusual, but HOW.

I was going 65 or so and saw the squirrel juking in front of me. I decided that since I couldn't predict what he was going to do, I'd just keep on the throttle and let him control his own fate.

He must have seen me at the last second and his instinct was to jump. This made him hit right on the toe of my boot, which launched him straight up into the air. I'm sure he never felt a thing.

I did make a mental note to myself on just how motorcycling has changed me. Before I rode, I never used to kick small animals to death.

How about a flaming cigarette Butt......

I haven't hit anything nasty on a streetbike. I have nailed hidden rocks and a few tree stumps on dirtbikes before, ripped the rear caliper off a CR-500 on a rock once, but that's about it. I do nail every gopher I can on the FJ, but that's on purpose and I count it as community service. Vermin control. And gophers ain't that big so it isn't very dangerous, just means I have to wash off the bellypan.

Never hit a bear (that has to rate as major suckage) but I've had a few close calls with deer (more vermin around here). So far I have managed to get lucky with Bambi, but if I ever do tag something, I lay money it will be a dam deer that does me in.

I haven't had any problems hitting things on the road (apart from a stanley knife blade and a couple of nails which lodged in my tyre) but I have had problems from the air.

On a gusty day, about four years ago, a huge restaurant umbrella got caught by the wind and was carried upwards for about thirty feet. I saw it happen as I was riding slowly by. As I watched, fascinated, I suddenly realised it was coming back down again, fast, shaft first, and straight at me. I accelerated at the last minute and it hit the road only a few feet behind my rear tyre.

Yeah, airborne attacks are more of a concern for me too, Hud. I lost count of how many birds have picked me and a bike as their preferred method of ending it all. Most aren't too bad (for me) but I hit a dam crow a couple of years ago that turned himself inside-out all over my head and chest. That was a bloody mess...... and now all the Americans are saying 'of course it was bloody' but the Britts and Canuckleheads get it......

I've been riding for a while, and luckily the largest thing/animal I've hit was a frog. Back when I had my Shadow. I remembered hitting it, then about a week later I went to the garage and it smelled so bad. I wondered what it was and got to looking. Come to find out the frog had gotten wedged underneath the radiator some how....sucker smelled bad.

I got into to trouble for NOT hitting the cat that came across the road on the weekend. Hubby hates cats and couldn't understand why I slowed down. My only response was - I just washed my bike, all I could think of was the frog story!