What is the strangest thing you see on the road...
 

You know, I notice all the strange things along the roadway. I am wondering what is the strangest thing you have found.

C'mon {bbusername}, I know you have a story!

Yesterday I was riding to work and right in the middle of one of the lanes on the other side of the road was a double mattress.

I don't know what it was doing there but I think it'd be much too noisy to get much sleep. It'd be breezy too with all those cars rushing past.

On my way home I noticed that someone had hauled it into the bushes on the roadside.

one of the strangest things i continue to see on my commutes is otherwise friendly people who voluntarily sit in their autos in heavy traffic crawling at a snails pace, about to rip their hair out and generally stressing themselves out and become super-aggressive and neanderthal-like the longer they sit in traffic ...

as i cruise by on my bike...

i've seen all kinds of other strange things and when i remember one i will post a real answer to your question...

I came within inches of running over a possum one night. The freaky part was trying to figure out what I was about to hit in the dark. I thought it was a cat, but I ruled that out because they're not that stupid. I couldn't figure it out until it was going under me and I was holding both my legs in the air as high as I could to avoid the vicious bite of this unknown alien beast. I think we both felt rather stupid as he ran back to the sewer grate.

The police were looking for "pieces" of a dead body. I was only fortunate enough to see the legs.:(

The person got hit in the dark, and when the police finally arrived it had been run over many more times. And when i passed the next morning they were still looking under cars for a few pieces.

Urbanking, I am dumbfounded.

But I'm sure it happens more than we know.

"ever" i would have to think about, but this week's "strange thing" was a road I use every day blocked from wall to wall by 40 tonnes of earth.

Dumped there in the early hours of the morning by a building site operator who did not want to pay to dump it in the local tip.

Quitely dumping earth in a secluded corner is one thing, but blocking a road is another ! - Luckly the long way around is only a few hundered meters extra.

I wonder how many days it will be before the local council clear it up ?

Another one that occurs to me was whilst on tour in the South of France with 4 other lads last summer. Cycling along a road above a beach packed with naked women, we had 3 accidents in 5 miles of straight road which may just possibly been due to our total inability to keep our eyes on the road.

Many years ago on a tour in northern california not far from Mt. Shasta, I was just coming up over a hill and lo and behold in the road, maybe 1000 feet ahead...were...could it be? am I in the twilight zone.....three dead cows swollen to the size of a small dirigible. They must have fallen off a livestock truck many hours before, died instantly, and now the micro-organisms in their gut were having a field day churning out methane gas. Their bodies were actually hissing as I went by, and I was afraid they would explode and shower me with Cow guts! Never saw anything like it.....


roughstuff

roughstuff, thats nasty. I once came upon a dead bloated black bear when mtn biking, the smell was like nothing else on earth, I couldnt stand within 100 feet it.

On a lighter note, i love your website! Just finished reading about the bees, OUCH! I'm off to spend a few more hours there, keep up the good work.

Well Iowa
I guess I'll have to let you down, I haven't seen any strange things, just many, many things, but none that I consider strange. I enjoy watching people in cars, some are mad, some are glad, and I'm convinced that some can never be pleased, I pitty them, they haven't discovered the value of cycling and don't seem to have the patience required to happily coexist with the strangest animal of all, humans.

Well, gee. I'm sorry to destroy your confidence in me, but I am at a loss. I have found some good tools lying in the middle of the road, most recently a Schraeder valve core driver.

Well...on a world tour of course ya get alot of stories. Here is another one from the Pasto-Popayan road in Colombia, which is notorious for its 'highway robberies.'

I always envisioned that if I was ever robbed on the road it would be exactly that...a highway robbery. A truck would pull up, two guys would get out and make clear they mean business. They would throw my bike in the back of the truck, and BOOM. Be gone....

Well. I was going down a small hill on a lonely stretch of the road, and sure enough a pickup truck goes by and pulls over about 1000 feet ahead. The two guys get out (I had eagle eyes by this time...i had a real strong sense something was up...) and damned, the guy on the drivers side has the BIGGEST pistol in his hand I have EVER SEEN!! Not only that, but up on the hillside above, in the scrubby brush, is a ANOTHER guy with a piece!

I figured the best thing to do is just keep slowly riding. To pull a Uturn would be useless. To stop would just postpone the inevitable. Better to ride on and be as cool as snoopy. In fact this was just the thing to do, because as it turned out, whatever their business, it had nothing to do with me. I just rode right by the guy with the massive pistol. (I did say Buenos Dias...i was gonna say 'nice pistol you have there!' but i don't know that much spanish).

roughstuff

Are you being sarcastic? Or are you refering to the fact that we both live in Iowa and there are some strange things along our rural road ways?

Which ever the case is here is the stangest thing I have ever seen. A couple of years ago during a club ride up Highway 12 a semi-truck passed us, that is not uncommon or strange. The truck was carrying dead livestock animals headed for a rendering plant, again that is not strange in any way. You see this all the time in this area. Heres the stange not to mention really gross part. The truck had to swerve to miss hitting something, I forget what it was and at the same time it rolled over a pretty rough patch of pavement. This caused the truck to jump and bounce more then it should have, the driver should have been going slower. Also the semi-trailer was a open top trailer. As a result of all of this one of the dead animals, a big one, bounced out of the truck. Upon impact with the pavement, it exploded. Oh yeah did I mention this was during the hottest month of the year for Iowa, August. This happened about 100 feet in front of us as we were riding. The smell was so horrendous, you can not imagine. We could not ride around and away from it fast enough. The driver did stop to see what he could do about cleaning up the mess.

Other then that theres really nothing out of the ordinary that I've seen along the roads during a ride.

Aha, another of those clever threads that show the name of the reader in it. :p I wondered, because I don't have any good biking stories...yet.

Some interesting things while driving, though--one dark night I saw a car coming from the opposite way, stop in the road. I noticed the headlights looked funny, like something skinny was moving in front of them, so I slowed down. Turned out there were two LARGE calves running loose on the highway. If I hadn't noticed the other driver, I would have smacked into them at 55mph! :eek:

Another time, I saw a pure white horse running at me, full tilt. It veered off the road as it came up to my car. Never saw the horse before or since, no idea where it came from--looked like something out of a fantasy movie.

But probably my most memorable moment was one deer season when a huge, ten-point buck leaped up and ran right alongside the car for a long way. The most memorable bit was the deer hunter on his opposite side who was pointing a rifle straight at us! Glad to say he didn't fire, and the deer eventually sneaked off to the woods for a good laugh at both of us.

Since I'm bikeboy , I better respond.
(-:

Strange things. Plenty over the years.

I was once riding through a city park on a bike path. Two squirrels were chasing and fighting in a tree, directly above the path and ahead of me. One fell out... landed on the path, stunned. I had to brake to avoid running over the li'l critter. After 10 seconds or so, he came to his senses, and was back in the game.

I ride past a couple golf courses. My youngest daughter is sick of me bringing golf balls home to her. (Sometimes I'll find 2 or 3 in one pass!) I bet I've collected 100 golf balls while riding.

Tools. I've collected a half-dozen or so nice tools along the roadway. By far the most significant - a 12-foot extension ladder. Yep - just lying there beside the road. I assume it probably came off a service truck or something. When it was still there, 2 days later, I drove out and retrieved it with my wife's minivan. Comes in handy around the place.

Underwear. Who cares, if it's just a pair of men's briefs? But if it's women's dainties... I always assume there must be an interesting story behind that bra or panties, left along the side of a public road. Hmmm....

IowaParamedic, I once found a set of golf clubs, and another time, a VCR,

I found a grocery bag with carrots and personal lubricant inside.

Sorry IowaParamedic, no strange things here in Sweden ;) not when riding. Once from a bus I saw a naked man outside a gasoline station, was he drunk or mentally ill, or maby both. Nothing odd or strange when riding, nothing that I can recall right now.

Anders K

A Concrete Horse Head.

On a gate post where it belongs it's okay, but when your cycling along and you see it out of the corner of your eye, it makes you stop pretty quickly.

Right you are iowa paramedic,wise you are in the ways of the force. On my way to work I cross a major highway using an overpass. As I approached the top of the hill one day I spied a lump on the sidewalk. Not thinking much about it I proceeded to pedal past it. However as I did it stretched out its neck and toppled off the curb.It turned out to be a generous sized snapping turtle.

Your right, i as well as you have some interesting stories this pertains to work more than cycling but here it goes

While watching a action packed episode of baywatch (for Pam and fyi we got some of the worst calls during that show) we recieved a call for an accident. upon our arrival i being the medic found a single vech. accident. it seems that a 18 y/o male fresh out of boot camp decided to test his iroc camaro and did a dukes of hazard into a worm farm. i found a open scull fracture and large open chest injury I.E. the entire left side of his chest (visible lung and bradycardic heart. the inj being to lg to use an occlusive dressing was trauma packed he was intubated and cpr began anyway the wierd stuff was that after the call a mixture of grey matter and worm was found in my shirt pocket and my boots were filled with with blood and body fluid.

for all those who are not in the medical field sorry if it was to grafic


Rob

here is another

an elderly me was on a vacation away from his wife yet he brought the family dog. well he proceded to roll he truck and travel trailer mult. times after we arrived he let the dog out of what was left of the trailer and the dog proceded into I-95 traffic and got bludgeoned (sorry for spelling) by oncoming traffic his comment was something like this "gosh he made it through the accident only to die anyway"


Rob

Hi Solomedic (you're not a twin, are you?<g>)

I had to think a bit, but the oddest thing that I've had to pass on my commute was my neighboor (sic) who was sitting next to his Porsche bleeding from a head wound. It should be perhaps mentioned that the conditions were:

- pouring rain (rain reigned)
- inverted Porsche

I was rather glad to note that people where there so I could continue, and only afterwards did I realize that it was my next-door neighbor.

I have to admit that at the time (see the sic above) we weren't really on speaking terms, so a certain amount of "Schadenfreude" took place on my part...sad, but true. He turned out to be OK though (both medically and metaphorically) which is a GOOD THING.

I'm sure glad that I could pass HIM, and he not me!

ride safely!
tt

One thing I came to think about was back in early eighties when we set of on bikes with school on a "sport day". One of the guys I was riding with collided with a little bird. He, so to say, front collided with a bird and got the poor birds bill in his forehead. This resulting in a bleeding wound and a dead bird with broken neck. Pretty odd?
Anders K
Sweden

That's not funny!

:lol: