What have you hit with your bike..??

Not an animal - riding home from work at midnight on a very dark night I saw a fire truck further along the road with blue lights on.What I didn't see in the darkness was the fire hose
across the road and hit that hard .Didn't come off but one of the mirrors on my ST1100 popped off and I scared the Bejesus out of myself !
 
A 2000 F250 Crewcab. Fortunately it was a glancing blow. The truck hit the left side of the tupperware knocking my bike on the right side. In a light rain, I was pulling away from a stop sign, turning right and he was cutting into my lane coming from the right to turn left onto the road I just left so it was slow speed. I was 20 miles from home, returning from a 5,000 mile trip to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador (on the TransLab).
 
Pedestrian jaywalking. Way back in 1966 on my first bike, a Honda 65 Sport. Downtown London Ontario. He was running across a four lane street, not very busy at the time. I saw him coming, so started to slow. At the same time, he noticed me and slowed his run considerably, so I thought he was going to wait. He sees me slowing, so starts running again at the same time as I had assumed he was stopping so I had accelerated again!

This happened TWICE, I slowed again, he slowed again and we both picked up speed again. By this time he was no more than 10 feet away from me and was hoofing it and I had no time to stop to avoid him. Knocked him to the ground in a tumble, I stayed upright, stopping just as I hit him. He jumps up and runs away into the mall on the other side of the street and I'm standing there astride my bike looking like "what t f" as passersby also paused in amazement. No damage to me or the bike, but he must have at least scuffed his clothes.

Other than a couple of birds and a squirrel and several bees, that was the most unusual strike I've had.
 
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A mourning dove took out the ST1100 windshield. A marmot cracked one of the lower gray fairing pieces on my ST1300 - fellow was stout. Hit two bees 1 week apart, impacts within a few inches of each other. For the second one, the side of my face swelled up like a balloon and I got to watch the GP races at Laguna Seca sporting a new nickname - the hunchface of Monterey. A wasp up the sleeve - I don't know how many times he/she stung me before I got stopped and killed it. :censored Knocked the feathers off a turkey or three when I scared up a small flock (is a group of turkeys called a flock?). Turkey vulture wing hit my helmet down in Mexico. Lots of ground squirrels - especially last year in northern California and southern Oregon.
 
Popped over a hill on a very lonely blacktop riding my KZ900 many years ago and saw a bunch of wide open eyeballs, belonging to a herd of horses. I nailed the brakes hard and got all squirrely. made it through most of them but slapped the back end of one doing probably 35 mph. It set me straight so I kept on going. Was a little sore though.
 
1980, May, a few days before Mt St. Helen's decided to get shorter. Beautiful spring day. I was 18, had my Class M endorsement for about 7 weeks. Riding Dad's 1974 Yamaha TX500, past a high school with a bunch of girls outside for gym class. Got to watching them and not the road, until I realized the light ahead had turned red and the intersection was occupied by a Lincoln Town Car making a perfectly legal and proper left turn, moving from my right to my left.

Hit it just behind the driver's side front wheel. Over the handlebars, over the hood, half-rotation while in flight so that I landed on the back of one shoulder and did a full-open body somersault. Shattered left patella, broke right tibia leaving the bike- think I hit the handlebars as I launched. Blacked out for a few moments- not really sure how long but enough time for a crowd to gather.

Wiped out front wheel and fork tubes on the bike, and broke the aluminum casting that held the gauges. Tank dented, after-market saddlebags ripped off when the books inside them didn't stop at the same moment the bike did, and became one-time-use pile drivers. Bike was never repaired (by Dad); don't rightly know whether it was sold for scrap or salvage, or just junked.

Ended my riding career until last year when I bought the ST.

Not a motorcycle accident but....

Was out on my tandem bike riding with my cousin as stoker, an my two brothers on singles. Rural southern Ohio, near Portsmouth, mid 1990's. Came zooming down a small twisty on a forest back road and around a blind curve, probably around 35 mph. Four chickens are loose in the road in front of me. Birds scatter, two each to the left and right. One bird decides- and nobody will ever know why- to cross the road back from my right to my left. Hit it square on, yielding an explosion of feathers reminiscent of a bad accident in a pillow factory. Bike shuddered badly twice then inertia took over and it stabilized; my cousin had the good sense to just go slack and not to try to fight it.

Left a bike-tire-sized groove in the chicken carcass but must've killed it instantly. Took a week to finish removing chicken feathers from the chains on all three bikes but no damage to equipment or riders. An hour or two later we passed back in the opposite direction and there was no sign of Chicken Little so I assume the owner had an unanticipated chicken fricassee for lunch or dinner that day.
 
I have killed a few birds with my bike and ran over a cat which was kind of uneventful sort of like running over a small speed bump. In my previous car, a VW Jetta, I hit a cat with the front air dam which cracked from the impact, you could feel the cat roll under the car but it survived as I saw it run back to the house it came from.

Gerhard
 
So....were the girls impressed with the TX500/Lincoln episode?? Surely they came over to help nurse you back to full health ;)
 
gn83tm said:
So....were the girls impressed with the TX500/Lincoln episode?? Surely they came over to help nurse you back to full health ;)
Click to expand...

All I can say is that they were all standing around in a circle looking down at me when I regained consciousness, but that none of them (as far as I know) actually took the trouble to come visit me in the hospital. There was that one unsigned mystery card I got that said simply "My heart belongs to Daddy... but you can have the rest of me when you get well soon."
 
[/QUOTE] I thought we'd come to an understanding about what was going to happen . . . [/QUOTE]

That is too funny...
 
On my way to Nashville to take my NAB exam I hit a wild turkey at 90 mph on a ST1100. Hit him with the R. tip over guard. Scared the hell out of me. I saw him spinning in the road as I rode on down the road. Got my adrenalin up; I passed the exam too!
 
Hit a chunk of concrete going up the Silver Strand to Coronado, CA on the way to work (North Island) one morning. Didn't know I'd cracked the rim of the GL1000 until a few months later, when I was changing the tire.

On the way to Big Bend, smacked a dove which knocked off a mirror cover.

Hit an asphalt gray animal on the way home from a TexSTOC at Ft Davis several years ago. Didn't know it was a porcupine until we stopped for breakfast in Fort Stockton, and we saw I had quills stuck in my boot.
 
Wow what a great bunch of stories. Sorry 'bout the backhoe STripper.

Love all the Bee strikes.

I think the best so far is the ped. Damn jaywalkers!

Keep them comin !!!!

T
 
Hit a buck and a quarter on the new ST yesterday.....:06biker::06biker:
That's one deer and a baby NOT!

T
 
A number of years ago on a Honda Shadow I hit a duck, took a number of hours to clean up the mess in the front spokes, rad and engine fins, glad I was wearing chaps they were easier to clean.
 
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