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I've hit a human being once.

It was around 1984, I was headed back from cross country practice on my Schwinn World 10 speed. I was haulin' *** and keeping up with traffic (35 mph) when a boy around 10-12 years jumped out in front of me with less than 10 feet to spare. I hit him dead on and went down with the bike ("clipped" in). I slid on my left side on the asphalt for probably 20 or so feet. I was fortunate that I was not run over, and I was skinned up pretty good. No helmet, and the skin of my earlobe separated and I had an interesting air bubble there.

Needless to say when I was able to get up and looked back the boy was holding one of his arms (it didn't look right at all), when his buddies grabbed him and took off running across the street never to be seen again.

What was amazing was that my front wheel took the entire impact, but my rear wheel was totally tweaked.

I was kayaking last summer and a giant (I MEAN GIANT) swan attacked me. Swans sound like nice birds, but this was serious stuff, an attack by a huge mean wild territorial animal.

I'm sure it weighed 100 pounds and had very, very, very wide wingspan. It came thundering out of the water, whumping its wings on the water - sounded like a monster coming to kill me.

As it was making contact with me, I hit it in the head with my paddle like Babe Ruth must have hit baseballs (I can still imagine the feeling of hitting an animal with a full swing of a kayak paddle). I don't think the swan was really hurt, but the blow took the power out of its attack and it backed off. It charged twice more (whump! whump!) but never attacked again.

You'll see a sign warning about this swan (named Fred) off Highway 27 in East Hampton, NY.

One of a group before me was going downhill with a car coming uphill. The car struck a deer which went flying through the air and hit the biker! Other than the fact that the frame snapped into two, he walked away with a number of scrapes.
As for me, I've got a bunch of bugs in my face, and in my eyes--I always wear glasses now; I'm protected from the bugs and the wind.

I had a feeling there'd be some wild stories out there. Some of these are absolutely hysterical (where human life was not seriously threatened)! The stories involing deer are astounding!

I just recalled another of my own. I was riding behind my wife, when a chipmunk ran into her front wheel and did a somersault off of her spokes. He seemed to escape unharmed - possibly a skinned nose or swollen chippy lip (chipped tooth?).

Cheers