Originally Posted by
A.Winthrop
.
Yes, I'm running into acorns too. Not so bad, even running
over them on my narrow, hard road bike tires.
.
Horse chestnuts are another story. A year or so ago, when
on my usual daily run, I blew a totally unnecessary stop
sign so I could make a fast, hard right turn and ran smack
into a mass of horse chestnuts being feasted upon by about
30 squirrels. It scared the poop out of me as chestnuts were
popping under my wheels and squirrels were running this way
and that, as squirrels do, to avoid getting run over.
.
Hmmm... maybe that stop sign WAS necessary after all.
.
My morning commute takes me down one mile of Route 206, which has a fair amount of traffic. Not my favorite part of my ride. So this morning, in the rain, in the dark, my headlight was illuminating all the debris about ten or twenty feet before I reached it. Most of that debris was leaves, of course, so I was just going over it all. But just as I was hugging the curb while letting some cars go by, I saw something I couldn't identify under all the leaves, and I didn't have time or room to maneuver around it. I hit it squarely with my front wheel, with such a jarring shock I thought I was going to go down. But then it was all over, I was still riding the bike, the cars had gone by, everything was fine, except my hands, my arms, my neck, and my back hurt.
I was momentarily very angry, so angry I wanted to go back and kick the **** out of whatever I'd hit, or at least identify it. I figure it was at least six inches high, and probably had been designed as part of a car. It sounded hollow, like hard plastic. But I was running late, so I kept going.
I'll probably hit it again tomorrow.
