snarkypup

First of all, Pastor Bob, to be known as the "anti-beaver pastor" is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Seriously. I nearly spit ramen noodles all over my laptop.

Actually, it comes from the dog my ex kept after our divorce. We needed a family "handle" and she was the barkiest, snappiest little animal on earth, and ruled our lives. A cattle dog named Poppy... what a nightmare dog. He loves her, though, and she's still around, snapping at mailmen and everyone who isn't "daddy," even after TWO rounds of obedience school and being debarked after the neighbors called animal control for the hundredth time. I'm not really a dog person, but somehow the moniker stuck to me, not him. I am, though, extremely snarky, so perhaps that's it. Just ask my students, who love getting comments on their English papers that read: "Oh really?" or one of my favorites: "Get a match!" They love me, and know I love them, so it's all in good fun and they enjoy it.

I want to know how the OP is doing? Better?

Rabid Koala

Glad you are OK! The bike can be repaired a bit more easily than you can.

I have to be more alert for rattlesnakes than for beavers where I live. I have only seen a few rattlesnakes in all my years of riding.

Drillium Dude 

Please give us an update on your various bumped parts Glad you and the bike didn't suffer more - OTBs blow.

Wow, some of the other stories: hit and run where someone then stole the bike, and another where someone tried to rob the cyclist after the accident? Incredible, truly incredible.

In Hawaii, it was mongooses (mongeese?) that one had to look out for in the Pearl Harbor area. I'm afraid I ran one over on the Ala Moana bike trail once after playing a feinting dance with it fifty feet out. Bummer.

mapleleafs-13 

man that photo is funny, i hate squirrels anyways, sounds kinda mean but they're really annoying, there's too many around me.

when i'm in my backyard working on bikes and so on, they're aways running across my garage roof. Last year they ate a hole through my eavestrough to get into my attic space to live there over the winter, so for a few months i kept getting woken up by the sound of squirrels running across the top of my ceiling in the mornings, by the way, it cost me about 250 bucks to get a pest control company to come and remove them, because it's illegal in toronto to do anything to them without proper care or so, i wish i could shoot em but you can't.

Then some time over the summer a squirrel ate through my chimney meshing, came through the chimney, ate through the firewood mesh section in the basement and ended up running around my house for the better part of 30 minutes while i opened every door to try to chase it out of my house, this happened twice. i have since then fixed both issues with new thicker meshing so they can't get back in.

Then around august when i was finishing working on my pinarello veneto, i had it leaned up against the side of this work table i have, which is moveable and portable so i can work on bikes around my backyard, anyways a squirrel jumped onto my garage roof, then jumped onto my tree branch which is really low, then jumped onto my pinarello and tipped it over so it fell down onto the grass and concrete, luckily nothing scratched and there was no damage.

at this point, i think they have something against me, ever since these events i've been very Anti-squirrel.

Mike Mills

As long as we are telling stories of our inglorious dismounts, I have had one, too. Oh, okay, several but I will bore you with only one.

I was riding in upstate New York, heading towards Kingston. I went off the concrete road surface and onto the black top shoulder. As I tried to get back to the concrete, I flat-sided the wheel against a small curb between the concrete and black top. I got high side launched into on-coming traffic and the bike went to the road's edge.

When I fell, I rolled to my backpack and skidded to a stop. When I stopped, I was face up on the roadway. As I opened my eyes a car's wheel well went right over the top of my head blocking out my view of the sky. All I could see was the wheel well and the top of the tire and the dirt up inside the wheel well.

That car did an emergency stop and pulled off the road, as did many others. The driver came running out into the road to see if I was okay. I was scraped and scratched to smithereens (serious road rash) but otherwise unharmed. I got back up on my bike and pedaled onwards.

Over the next few days of cycle camping, I got very sore and the scrapes oozed copious quantities of lymph for which I had a woefully insufficient number of gauze pads. I felt lucky I had any. What's the name of that liquid bandage stuff? * Do you have any idea how much that stuff hurts when applied to large patches of bruised, slightly infected road rash. At least it kept them clean. I had no money for first aid supplies. I was hundreds of miles from home.

Honestly, I never even seriously considered going home until the planned trip was over.



* ETA- I looked it up. It's called "New Skin". An apt name, as mine had been scraped completely off. The package says it's for "small" scrapes - LOLOLOLOL! If they only knew. I should buy and keep a bottle as a memento of that trip. Maybe make a trophy out of a bottle.