I was riding yesterday and had the *#@* knocked out of me! I had made this ride 4 times in the last 3 weeks and hadn't had a problem. I was riding up a grade about 15 mph and thought a bee got in between me and my seat. Then I thought I got stung on the finger. Then it felt like I got srtuck by lighting!
It knocked me off the bike(road rash) I got up tried to pick my bike up and it knocked the crap out of me.
Then I went and put my foot on the guard rail and yes it shocked me too. I looked up and seen High Power lines running over the hwy I was on. It's a gas station on one side and a golf course on the other side of the road that the lines cross, and they say they never have any trouble. What do you all think? And has this ever happened to any of you?
Wish I had a light bulb!

Call up the utility company and have the police seal off the area before someone's killed.

What were the weather conditions when you got shocked?

Was it less humid on the days you were not shocked?

Stay away from this place. Call 911, the police, or the local electricity utility ASAP and explained what happened to you. It sounds like you had an unfortunate encounter with a live power line.

wow that is scary. As everyone said call the local utility. Most likely, they will take it very seriously and check it out as that is a significant liability for them. BTW you might want to at least call a doctor and describe what happened, see if you need to do anything.

No weather was about the same as other times, I had just ridden thru about an hour early and no shock. Called local power board and they blew me off said nothing showed up on their system. It sure showed up on mine! ouch!

Yikes, that would scare the C out of me! Since the power company is ignoring you, why don't you get a voltmeter and see if you can pick up any readings?
Yeah, this is probably dangerous, but my curiosity would get the best of me.
You don't have any significant electrical devices on you bike-a powerful battery fot a 10 watt light?
I don't picture static electricity repeatedly shocking you-I get shocked in AZ when I go there, but it is a heck of a lot dryer than Virginia, and it has never happened on a bike-just when going across a carpet etc.
You weren't wearing any new clothing?Something you have never worn while riding before?I think wool is know for static electricity?Nothing new on the bike? I doubt the synthetic biking shorts lose electrons the way wool did??
Luck,Charlie

If the power utility is ignoring you, consider calling a local newspaper or TV station. Ask to speak to a reporter or producer who deals with local issues, and tell your shocking story!

Don't do it for the sake of publicity. Do it because your actions could save a life.

alien invasion

Well, the publicity will certainly not hurt....

I did have on a new pair of Reebok padded cycling shorts, that's all that was different.

Did you now have any super powers that you didn't have before? Ability to fly or turn invisible? X-ray vision? Telepathy?

That'd be awesome.

I saw a high voltage line starting to short out in Anaheim one night. When I called the PG&E emergency number the voice got more interested when I said (truthfully) "Look, I am a Registered Professional Engineer and I know the difference between the sparks caused by dirty insulators and a full short in a 240,000 KVA line." Ten minutes later a big work truck and crew were outside my door so I could give them exact directions. Twenty minutes later I got a call from the crew chief, "Thank you, thank you, that was the main feed to Newport Beach and we got there just in time."

If they had ignored me, my neighbor was an executive with the local Baby Bell. I would have told him and let him hit them at a higher level.

After reading this I still don't really know what happened. I've heard of dry weather creating static electricity but this sounded like he was just riding through and got zapped by something?

Eeps

There was a similar item in a bicycling magazine a few years ago...maybe it was Bicycling Magazine. The writer mountain biked up to a bare hilltop below power lines, and when he stopped and stood over the top tube, he got zapped in the scrotum.
High power lines are surrounded by a magnetic field which in turn can induce an electric current in nearbye metal objects so I imagine it was some sort of secondary effect like that, not power actually somehow leaking out of the grid. Still, it sounds hazardous enough!

Especially with the gas station there!

I figure a lot of mountain bike trails go along power lines. I was intrigued enough by your story to post a question in the mountain bike forum to see if anyone there had a similar experience.

Hmmm. So you passed a steel frame connecting two rapidly spinning steel wheels through a large, pulsing magnetic field. Very interesting.

I don't think it was a line short. My experiences with 110v tells me that if it was a high power line with possibly hundreds of thousands of volts we would be reading about this in the Safety and Advocacy forum with a thread title like "Cyclist killed by power lines!!!"

I don't see anyway that you could have gotten shocked by the lines and still be alive (or be conscious anyway). The only thing I can think is static or you were tazered (I assume you would know if you were so that doesn't work). I just don't know what else could do that.

I started a thread on this topic in the mountain bike forums, to see if any of them had the same experience, since there are often trails along power lines, and a couple reported similar but perhaps milder incidents.

I like the explanation alluded to here best. I don't know WHY this is but I remember experimenting with electric motors and generators back in the days when everyone thought "Univac" when you mentioned computers. Through some coincidence, the conditions were just right for your bicycle wheels or crank to cut the electromagnetic lines of flux in such a way that your bike became a generator. Maybe your first shock occurred when you passed through a small puddle, providing a ground? It could be the guard rail, where you had another shock, also served as a ground or maybe it was charged. Maybe this idea is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Lowell Pontė was writing about electromagnetic pollution back in the 1970's. Homeowners would stand under high tension wires running near their houses with flourescent tubes which would glow just from being in proximity to the lines. If you have the inclination, try the fluorescent light experiment and/or see what indications you can pick up with a (milli)voltmeter.

electromagnetic seep from high voltage arrays is a real phenomenon, for sure. I've never thought out the extrapolations of passing a bicycle thru one. probably could have serious consequences.

No no... power companies say EMF is not a problem around their high power lines... really. Honest. Just ask them.

I talked to a buddy at work today and he said him and his brother was riding their 4-wheelers last year under some high power lines and his brother got zapped and it burned his elbow where it touched the rear rack on the atv.

There's still a lot we don't yet know about electricity. My father recalls, as a young boy, being in the living room of his house at the time during a thunder storm. They lived out in the country, and thus had lightning rods on the roof of the house. Lightning struck (I can't remember where, I'll have to ask him again). He claims to have seen balls of electricity/energy floating around the livingroom floor, until they hit a heating duct (which was metal and grounded) where they promptly disappeared.

Of course, this goes right along with the fact that what we don't know is infinitely greater than what we do know. I do not attribute his experience to anything supernatural, but rather to an aspect of electricity we have yet to understand, probably because circumstances need to be ideal and such ideal circumstances are rare.

Sounds much like St. Elmo's fire, sometimes seen on old wooden sailing ships during lightning storms.