Weird things you've seen while riding

[Gary856]

Heading down Mt Hamilton Rd this afternoon I caught up to 3 riders near Grant Ranch. I waited for the straight section in front of Grant Ranch to pass. Passed the last rider (a woman riding a R1200GS), no drama.

The next rider (wearing a dual-sport helmet with goggles, on some kind of dual-sport looking bike with wire wheels, newer KLR or?) sped up, passed Quimby Rd, but braked early into turns. I got into position, and blasted past him/her coming out of the next turn. (I was riding a rented FJ-09 which has great passing power, so I put it to good use there.)

The lead rider, also a woman, was farther ahead on a newish bike with orange wheels, no plate; a Duke 390 or 790? We got into the twisty section with blind turns by the time I caught up. A couple of turns later she did something really surprising - she pulled to the left, completely into the opposite lane, right before a blind left turn, and slowed (to let me pass, apparently.) I was thinking - what the hell are you doing?! What if there's a car coming around the corner?! All I could do was to pass quickly, and was prepared to warn the car (if there was one) around the next turn (there wasn't). That could've been bad. If somebody knew this rider, ought to have a talk with her. To let someone pass easily, just slow a bit and move a bit to the right.

 

[budman]

Tarantulas on Peach tree.

Looked like rocks running across the road from a distance.
An amazing two wheel moment.

 

[motomania2007]

Ball lightning running around the barbed wire fence around a horse corral in Ruidoso, NM

 

[nebulous]

Near the peak of Mt Hamilton, coming back to San Jose Just after sunset, I saw 3 mountain lion cubs playing around. Fast on their heals was pretty unhappy mother mountain lion that was, lucky for me, more interested in catching up with her brood than attacking the wheeled horse looking thing.

Coming back to SF from somewhere very north on Hwy 1, a friend and I, doing a solid 100mph, kept hitting a headwind at the top of many rises. About the time i was thinking this was a not a good idea, my friends VFR was launched vertically by the wind. He bounced twice on the rear wheel, still doing well over 80, before the front wheel came back down. I remember seeing the filler cap on his tank at one point, thinking "thats not good."

 

[dravnx]

Tonopah

I was eastbound on I-6 about 15-20 miles east of Tonopah when I got a laser warning on my bird dog. This went on for about 30 seconds. There is nothing and nobody out there. You can see for miles in any direction. My guess is I was being laser designated by the military. That area is right in the middle of an MOA, a military airspace practice area.

 

[cheez]

Watching a tornado touch down in North Dallas while I raced the storm home on the VTX. It was about a mile south of me, but I clearly saw the cone form and the touchdown. The storm was approaching from the southwest and I was headed due west, so I was able to outrun the squall line and get into the garage just as the hail started at home. This was April 3, 2012.

 

[Busy Little Shop]

Nothing weird about you and your 500cc Honda showing up for a ride among a group of Big Bad Motors of Death... whats weird is their nice
letter stating you and your "Miniceptor" are not welcome to return... he he he...

 

[Tally Whacker]

A few years back a friend and I were riding south at a decent clip on Peachtree when we came around a bend and saw the most amazing and disturbing scene.

A wide turnout on the right had a giant sycamore tree shading the entire turnout. There was a guy wearing camo pants and no shirt, a woman weaning daisy dukes and a halter top. No vehicle in evidence. I have no idea where they'd parked.

The guy had a blood- covered machete in his hand, and a fair bit of blood spattered on him. Hanging from a big branch of the tree was a carcass with its head and limbs cut off- it took me a long look before I became convinced it was a deer. The guy was busy skinning it with the machete when we buzzed by.

There was absolutely, 100% chance of us NOT stopping to chat.

 

[Johndicezx9]

A murder.

 

[banshee01]

Nothing weird about you and your 500cc Honda showing up for a ride among a group of Big Bad Motors of Death... whats weird is their nice
letter stating you and your "Miniceptor" are not welcome to return... he he he...

Damn from 1991?? Did you ever tone it down and get a cruiser?

Edit: just read your Sig and I know the answer

 

[gixxerjeff]

A murder.

:wtf
opcorn

 

[GAJ]

We got into the twisty section with blind turns by the time I caught up. A couple of turns later she did something really surprising - she pulled to the left, completed into the opposite lane, right before a blind left turn, and slowed to let me pass. I was thinking - what the hell are you doing?! What if there's a car coming around the corner?!

That is bananas.

Did she look like a tentative rider?

If so, I would have backed way way off to avoid the rider riding with their mirrors and perhaps binning it to be honest.

As to weird things?

Oddly, nothing immediately comes to mind, just the normal stuff we all see as motorcyclists; bad riding, bad driving, vultures that leave a carcass only at the last second and almost hit you, deer that ride alongside of you, yellow jackets inside your moto jacket, 30 degrees in the am and 100 degrees in the afternoon.

None of that strikes me as weird though.

 

[GAJ]

Nothing weird about you and your 500cc Honda showing up for a ride among a group of Big Bad Motors of Death... whats weird is their nice
letter stating you and your "Miniceptor" are not welcome to return... he he he...

:laughing

What the heck did you do you bad bad boy! :laughing

 

[buellistic]

A body on elcamino..
At first I thought it was a plastic garbage bag.
It was at nite.
The police caught the hit and run driver by Lawrence xway.
He ran over 2 people. The other guy was still in his windshield....

 

[Johndicezx9]

:wtf
opcorn

Just before Thanksgiving, November 1991, it was a Sunday night, and I was riding my Katana 750. I left some friends' house (ratpick) and was heading home.

As I rode up the street there was a woman standing in the middle of the road, looking at me, totally spacing on the headlight. She wasn't moving one direction or the other. I slowed, to ask if she was alright. Out of the darkness a dude leaped from between 2 cars, so figuring it might a set-up to grab my bike I punched it to get far enough away. When I turned around I could see him grab her and drag her back to where he came out from, where there was a third person, a dude, seated sorta upright against the bumper of a car, but definitely not conscious.

Since they didn't come after me, I figured they were just fucked up (alcohol or drugs), but I felt the need to report it, just in case. I got to the Safeway that's on top of the hill and called it in from the payphone (remember those?) outside. 911 put me through to Monterey PD, I told them the above, left my name and numbers in case they needed anything else.

The next day while I was at work I got a call from a detective. After I repeated my story he told me that the two people I saw had murdered the guy I saw up against the car in a dispute. I asked him if they were gonna need me for anything else, and he said probably not, the had plenty of witnesses.

Apparently, they killed him in his apartment, hit him in the head with something heavy. I saw them moving him to the car. They then took him and the car down to the old parking lot by the Coast Guard pier, and then rolled the car off the edge to the rocks not more than 6 feet below in an attempt to make it look like an accident. The two geniuses didn't realize there was a couple of RV's at the other end of the lot with a scuba diving group that was there to go out early early in the morning. They called it in as well...

 

[Gary856]

I read about ball lightning in a science fiction but didn't know they really existed. I just looked it up on YouTube - it's a pretty supernatural and scary looking phenomenon. The dude with the bloody machete and the fast hwy 1 riding in high wind are pretty wild, too.

That is bananas.

Did she look like a tentative rider?

If so, I would have backed way way off to avoid the rider riding with their mirrors and perhaps binning it to be honest.

I agreed with your point of not stalking another rider. That's why I usually keep my distance until I'm ready to pass. She was in the lead way ahead so I assumed she was the best rider in that group, which was going at a smooth and decent pace. I only got close to her for a couple of turns and her riding looked fine until that very unexpected move. On that narrow and twisty section of Mt Hamilton Rd I've encountered fire engines and big PG&E trucks coming around blind corners at a fast clip taking up 1-1/2 lanes, so her move was a shock to me.

 

[Gary856]

Last Saturday I rode south on Hwy 25 and saw a lone guy walking south. He wore no shirt and was deeply tanned, and carried what looked like a wooden case (not certain about this, it was odd looking,) on his back. Now Hwy 25 is a long, lonely backroad with long stretches of nothing, it's nothing like a stroll in the city. Anyway I continue my ride on Coalinga Rd and Los Gatos Creek Rd to Coalinga, then 198, 25, Lonoak Rd to KingCity, then Bitterwater Rd back on 25. So it was about 160 miles and 4 hours of riding later, I saw that same lone walker again, still walking south on Hwy 25. I felt sorry for the poor guy and wondered what the story was.

 

[brichter]

Ball lightning running around the barbed wire fence around a horse corral in Ruidoso, NM

Saw this stuff once in Texas, bouncing just above the road. Definitely tweaked my weird-shit-o-meter upwards...:wtf

Only other thing that was weird was 2 people boning by the side of the road up on Summit Rd, the tighter stuff between Black Rd. and Bear Creek. She was leaning on a fence and he was gettin busy... No cars in sight, must have been hikers or ? They didn't even slow down. :rofl:rofl

 

[bikeama]

Riding south on I-5 headed for work on a rainy morning. BMW sedan moved from the fast to the slow lane quickly. Did about a 450-degree spin almost facing the incoming traffic at 5:30 AM. Wife/girlfriend got out of the passenger side and was beating on the driver's door as I went by. Always wonder what the story was.

 

[GPzPop]

ok, certainly not as heinous as bloody machete wielding murderers ( Cheyene ?), but...

back roads around livermore, a hobo looking dude, riding his pedal bike no hands in the middle of 2 lane road,

while playing a violin

i have seen him a few times so I assume he is a local