Tires

[biohazardman]

Other,

It was night and someone had taken one of those sawhorse like road werq signs and threw it in the middle of the road. It was in the darkest part of the road and my bike light was for me to be seen and not to see with. I hit it doing a bit over twenty with no warning at all. It was pretty exciting for a few seconds with a huge bump and then as I flew into the air, but as the 65lb bike did not stay airborne long and since I was still moving right along I just kept going. Good wide rim and 12ga spokes were impressive no damage at all. I made myself a nice bright LED light right after that. Ran off a nice high curb I did not know was there a week or two earlier. Lights are good at night. ;^)

[amberwolf]

I ran over a soda can once that I ASSuMEed was empty. I thought I would go all postal on it and crush it to death. Wrong It was full, of cement I think, as It did not budge. It launched the front wheel up into the air and then bronkoed the rear wheel. Luckily I did not go down, but THAT was one wild ride, Yeehaaaaaaa

I have seen a small motorcycle (rebel-250-sized) hit such a full can, one of a bunch that looked like they had spilled out of somebody's groceries (along with other items). Same thing happened to him as you, except he wasn't so great at recovering from it and slid down the road after his rear tire came back down.

The can was launched a few dozen yards backwards, and exploded in foamy goodness when it hit the asphalt the second time as it bounced.

So it's equally possible that like him, the can you hit was simply an unopened soda, rather than opened and filled with something else.

[D-Man]

Interesting no one has hit a bird. Someone did awhile back. I forgot who it was. Something about coming around a corner fast when either a crow or vulture was sitting on road kill and couldn't lift off fast enough!

[patrickza]

The other day I went to the grocery store to pick up some random stuff. Shampoo, toothpaste and hairspray etc, when my ex calls and tells me there's an emergency.

So anyway, I'm rushing over but it's quite late and dark, I see some quick movement and i felt a thud and just knew I hit something. I stopped the bike, turned around and noticed that i ran over a rabbit

It was lying there on the side of the road quivering in pain and i was like, i have to put it out of its misery.

So I'm trying to figure out what I can kill it with, but I had no heavy tools or weapon like things on me at the time. Looked in the bag of groceries and saw the hairspray. i think to myself...the hairspray has a lot of chemicals in it and might just do the trick. so i began dousing the rabbit with the spray. It gives a little cough so I think, hey this must be working, and empty the rest of the tin on it...

The next thing i know the rabbit jumps up and bounces away like nothing is wrong. im like wtf... so i'm standing there on the road in the middle of the night and looking at the bottle of hair spray. I hold it up to the bike light and on it is a label that says "Restores body and bounce to damaged hair".

[kfong]

Damn, you had me going.

[amberwolf]

That is both terrible and classic. I know a few people that would appreciate it, if you don't mind me reposting it elsewhere (with credit and a link).

[D-Man]

Any more votes? I run over dead possums all the time. Not much left but the hides.

[beast775]

i live 100ft from an industrial area,and there is a shortcut going between two big steel plants.so one night i decide to go for a coffee and take the shortcut , almost had to drag my bike 1000ft back.what looked like small packing foam turned out to be sharp steel twisted nuggets that were a whiteish blue color,i tried pulling out a few but they were very sharp and kinda barbed.very bad experience.

[liveforphysics]

I killed a crow with my knee a few months ago. He was eating from a fast-food sack in the middle of the road, I was riding towards him on my GSX-R. It looked at me, I guess it figured it had time to spare, because it pecked a few more times at the bag rather than just flying away immediately. I was wide-open-throttle, the bike gets up to tripple-digit speed in a hurry. The poor guy would have been fine if he had just stayed put (I wasn't aiming for him), but instead he just lifted off a second too late, and next thing I knew I had a sore knee with feathers stuck to it. Wouldn't think impact with a crow on your knee would feel like much, but it was a pretty good zing on my knee.

I guess that's not really a worst-thing to hit, but it was an uncommon thing to slay with knee.

[Kingfish]

Dang Luke, that's something ~ feathers et al!
Instantly reminded me of the time when I was a kid on Honda 50 having a great day blasting up a USFS dirt road when a wasp or bumblebee hit me straight between the open-shirt and promptly stung me in anger - causing me to wipe out right there head-first big time. Amazingly I walked away with just a sprained thumb and a nasty welt just below my neck. F@#$! probably survived and flew away.

[liveforphysics]

F@#$! probably survived and flew away.

Well, if it's any consolation, my winged impactee certiantly didn't fly away.

[boostjuice]

My vote = Other = Eucalyptus fruit/buds or "gumnuts" in colloquial Australian slang. With so many trees overhanging footpaths in the "bush capital", hitting a patch of these is common. If they're the larger ones then it's like riding over marbles. I hit a dense patch of these whilst leaning into a corner on a footpath running parallel with a 6 lane road during peak hour. Lost control, flew through the air into the path of oncomming traffic. If traffic wasn't going slow due to peak hour congestion i'd probably be dead/in a coma. As it was, i just kissed a bumper bar as the driver pulled up pretty quick. So i guess what i almost ran over caused me to be almost run over

[dumbass]

3 week ago my wife and I were trail riding. In one area the trail exits the woods and joins with the local sidewalk. My wife was iabout 20 feet n front of me. We both saw a man kneeling on the right side of the walkway (walkway is 6' wide). We both thought he was pulling weeds or something. What he was actually doing is finishing freshly laid cement. You guessed it just like on TV my wife rode right through it and i stopped inches from it. Luckly it was already setting up and her bike only sank 1 1/2" just shout of the rims. Talk about a stupid "dumbass" to not have it blocked off. It was early morning so I'm guessin we were some of the first riders to come upon it. They actuall had the entire block torn up this way. About every 20 feet had a 6 x 6 foot area of fresh cement. the next area after where my wife did her trick had dog paw and it's owners foot prints in it. On our way back they had the block completely closed off. DA..You think???

[amberwolf]

That's a pretty common way they do stuff like that around here, too. They do mark off stuff that's being worked on on road surfaces, but stuff on sidewalks/etc rarely gets any kind of warning or marker unless it's the city itself doing the work (rare). Usually it's some sbu-sub-subcontractor, and most often the workers don't speak any English, and have had no training in what they are doing, either, so it's no surprise that it's also not marked off (usually their trucks don't even have any warning markers or other markings on them, just whatever they usually drive around, I think).

I've never ridden or walked into it, but the surfaces of many repaired sections bear squished witness to those that did.

What I *have* ridden over and nearly been killed by a couple of times are the places on concrete bike paths or sidewalks where they have pried up a couple of large squares of it (all the way to the break lines), done work, then just set them back down. They're not pushed all the way back down into the same level at the center, but rather left up in the center as if they were "ramps". Half the time both pieces are left with their center ends pushing on each other end-ways so they make a double-ramp. The other half, the dangerous one, is when they put one piece down level and the other piece resting on top of the end of the other, creating up to an 8-inch "cliff" on the other end of the "ramp" (depending on thickness of concrete plus whatever dirt they didn't pack down properly under it).

That cliff is invisible while you're riding up to it from the ramp end in most cases, as there is often dappled shade on it from trees or bushes, so you don't really see that it's a ramp until you feel the incline--it's way too late by then as the front wheel is about to get slammed onto the ground on the other end, down whatever distance the cliff is.

If you're going fast enough you'll launch into the air a bit, but my CrazyBike2 is heavy enough that it can't really do that at speeds I'd be going on concrete paths (hate the bumpbumpbumpbump of the edges at faster speeds; I don't mind random ones as much as repetitious ones).


So while that's not the worst thing I ever ran over, I guess it's up there.

And chinaberries are up there with marbles and sun-dried olives for something you don't want to ride over with a normal-weight bike on pavement.

[dequinox]

Ran over a gopher snake (not on my ebike), but managed to hop over it. It is now my pet ...what makes it the worst? All the money it has cost me up till now

[markcycle]

Squirrel

[Gordo]

One evening with my wife, I ran over 1000's of frogs which had been flattened by cars. Slipping and sliding on about 100' of dead frogs. My wife who could not see from behind, said no, I was wrong, those were just wet leaves. A year later, she comes home in her car one night, by the same road, wakes me up and tells me about millions of frogs hopping across the road, bouncing off the hood and windshield. I said, " no dear, those were leaves!"

[kevo]

Rim breaking potholes. Thankfully only taco'd my rims - could have been another collarbone!

[boostjuice]

Well...not ran over... but ran into.

Still got a sore shoulder from this one....



(landed poorly....lost my line.....looks a bit derrrrrp i know)

[Kingfish]

Updated...



This is the worst thing I have ever ran over

~KF

[Gordo]

Just to add the best procedure I have found for running into/over any animal less than 40Kg's. Keep your line, do not swerve, brake hard until just before impact and then release brakes and accelerate. Be prepared for serious conflict with the animal owner, if present. "You did that on purpose" is the normal comment.

[bigmoose]

I "pruned" some off topic responses in this thread. Please consider responses that have "some" connection to the subject at hand, it makes life easier for us all... thanks!