Tires

[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!