Home | Mobile | E-Mail Us | Privacy | Mtn Bike | Ride Director Login | Add Century/Benefit Rides
Home

Adventure Velo


Additional Info

None


About Bill
Past Columns

 

Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  2/1/2000

The Birds and the Bees

As the Editor of a cycling club newsletter, I tend to collect bike stories the way squirrels collect nuts. Club members frequently pass along anecdotes they think will make good column fodder. These items can be filed under several general headings: Crashes, Bonks, Breakdowns, Crazed Motorists, etc. But of them all, my favorites are the animal stories...our meetings with assorted furry and feathered fauna along the country roads. We're not talking Mr 'Possum here about the road kill variety-Flat Froggie or poor Mr 'Possum-but the ones still struttin' their natural stuff. Nor are we covering all the wonderful sightings of critters that turn our backroad training rides into magical meldings with the wider, wilder world. Just a simple listing of all the animals we've seen on bike rides would read like a text book of North American zoology...from seals to turtles, from foxes to pumas.

I'm an ugly TurkeyNo, in this case, we're concentrating on that subtext of animal stories where the encounters are really up-close and personal. For example, my pal Don e-mailed me a tale of being chased right off the road by three wild tom turkeys. These normally shy, reclusive birds-apparently flushed with springtime hormonal madness-were hunkered down in the middle of a country lane and were attacking anyone who tried to pass. Even cars and trucks were harried off the road, and when Don and his wife tried to pass on their bikes, the three turkeys attacked en masse. Don's not timid. You don't win Cat 4 field sprints, as he has done, by being timid. But when set upon by three furiously gobbling and snapping turkeys, Don's response was to sprint like mad...in the opposite direction.

Another club member contributed an anecdote about colliding with a low-flying egret on a morning commute. The big bird came ghosting out of a thick fog just at head level and the impact knocked both of them to the pavement. Imagine cruising along on a quiet morning ride when suddenly a white phantom with a six-foot wing span tries to fly through your Oakleys! Imagine how much worse it would have been if the rider's face had collided with the bird's beak rather than its shoulder.

I'll get you my Pretty!!Then there was the one about the hawk-and several riders witnessed this-that swooped down over a pack of cyclists and dropped a tree branch just in front of them on the road, causing riders to scatter in all directions. As the story was told, the "bomb" grew from a small stick to a large branch-much as the trout-that-got-away will grow-but all agreed on the essential, improbable core of the story. Most of us have had the painful experience of colliding with a bee while riding...a bee that has taken exception to being bumped into and has let us know about it. Oooh, I hate it when that happens! But one friend of mine tells a story from this particular genre that is the best (worst?) I've heard. Dan was passed by a slow-moving flatbed truck loaded with wooden crates and he jumped at the opportunity to do a little motor pacing off the back. Unfortunately, what he took to be crates of chickens, with a few small feathers fluttering aft, were-you guessed it-bee hives. Full of bees. He only realized his terrible error when his jersey and helmet were swarming with angry bees. He swerved into a driveway and ripped off his clothes, but not before absorbing several direct hits. To add insult to injury, the driveway he had chosen for his bail-out was the turf of a small but vicious attack dog who set about Dan's ankles while he was still battling with the bees. Isn't this fun?

Dan seems to have a way with insects. On a ride we did together, he set his helmet on the ground while we cooled our feet in a little creek. When he replaced the chapeau, he found it to be teeming with ants. He quickly removed it and tore off the lycra cover-this was in the days of soft-shell helmets with lycra covers-and after shaking out all the little visitors, he replaced the stretch cover, but got it on sideways, with the colored panels running side-to-side instead of front-to-back. Later, as we pacelined down the road, I remarked that the crossed-up cover made him look as if his head were twisted half-way around, at which another rider quipped, "Hey, don't bug him. Can't you see he's busy exorcising?"

The same person who contributed that atrocious pun was guilty of another equally criminal one-liner on another ride, again involving animals. When we rode into a herd of sheep on a mountain road, one of the startled woolies let fly with a buckshot load of sheep dung. As we dodged these little bouncing balls, Bob wondered, "Is this what they mean by riding in the pellet-ton?" Arghhhhh!

That ants-in-the-hat incident occurred on the same ride where we got caught up in a gen-u-wine cattle stampede. We came upon a herd of maybe 50 head of cattle in the middle of the road and after studying the situation for a minute, we decided to ride through their milling masses...but very slowly, so as not to spook them. Even so, they became fractious and-as we were about half-way through the pack-began capering about in a rather alarming way. Not a full-tilt stampede perhaps, but close enough for our comfort level, especially as many of them sported impressive sets of horns. Eventually, all of us-six riders and 50 bawling, brawling bovines-were gamboling along together at around 15-mph. Riding in the midst of several dozen large, lumbering steers brings a whole new meaning to the concept of pack riding. Jostling for position in a bunch sprint ain't even close!

One of my own personal favorites concerns a gray squirrel. These cute little critters are reputed to be quite smart, for instance cleverly defeating every ingenious attempt to thwart them from raiding bird feeders. However, when it comes to road savvy, they appear to be on a par with your average possum. I know of at least two cyclists who have collected them in their front spokes...not a pretty sight. My experience was not so grisly but was certainly bizarre. I was following another rider down a hill at about 30-mph when I saw a squirrel dart out from the side of the road and shoot right between the other rider's wheels...zipped right under the cranks. Pretty cool, huh? But wait! There's more: having pulled off this neat stunt, he stopped on a dime, did a quick 180, and shot right back the way he had come...right between my two wheels! As I was thinking about it later, I had a vision of a little row of spectator squirrels on the side of the road, cheering wildly, or perhaps holding up little judge's cards...5.9, 5.7, 5.6, etc. If I were judging, I'd have to give him a 6.0 for that one.

Then there's the story about colliding with a bear, and several about deer, the one about the mountain lion, and the attack of the wild pig... The list goes on and on. Some are perilous, some are silly, and some are bizarre, but all are just part of the entertainment when Mother Nature takes her show on the road.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



Rides
View All

Century's
View All

Links
Commercial
Bike Sites
Teams

Other
Advertise
Archive
Privacy
Bike Reviews

Bill
All Columns
About Bill

Bloom
All Columns
Blog

About Naomi

© BikeCal.com 2023