Originally Posted by
Homeyba
The thing that got my attention was once while riding down a country road at about 35mph in the early morning I saw what looked like a large dog in the road ahead of me. It was sitting, starring into some bushes on the side of the road. It was so intent on those bushes that it didn't hear me coming. As I got closer and closer the thing kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally I yelled at it because I was worried I would run into it. When it heard me it got up and I noticed it had a really long tail and it definitely wasn't a dog! The mountain lion then turned and ran off the in the other direction. I only missed it by 10 feet or so. That was pretty cool!
I had a mountain lion saunter across the road in front of me, and then crouch on the embankment on the other side of the road and watch me cycle past on a brevet a few years ago.
There I was cycling alone on a deserted road in the Canadian Rockies at about 9 pm ... the sun was just setting when I saw this thing cross the road. I was trying to figure out what it was when it crouched ... and as soon as it did, I knew it was from the cat family, and was a very large cat ... by the time I was a lane's width away from it, I knew what it was.
I had my helmet light on, so I turned my head to "look" at it and hoped that the bright shiney "eye" way up there would give it the idea that I was really big. It didn't chase me, but let me tell you that I was pretty shakey and jumpy for about an hour after ... and then just jumpy for the rest of the night.