Ducati Monster Forum

Dark.  High-way not lit well section.  I am riding one hand.  Chilling.  Hmm what the heck is that thing in the middle of my lane.  Oh snap, a freakin' dining room table laying on its side in the middle of the lane.  Quickly swerved around it. 

Glad it was not a group ride.  That is exactly why I never ride close to others and make sure to maintain staggered formation and maintain distance as much as possible.

Ofcourse after a few miles making a left turn just as the light turns red, the on-coming apparently had the same thought and guns it and i am in the turn.  For some reason, I did not freak out and gased a bit and he swerved a bit and avoided a head-on. 

Crappy day I guess.

What's the weird object you saw in the middle of the road while on bike ?

We were out and saw a funny bump in the road.

Turned out it was an old soviet anti personnel land mine.  They had buried it wrong.  OD folks came out and detonated it. 

This was in Lebanon.

Suv turned sideways in the middle lane with no lights on.. on LIE west bond..  the street lights we're out in that section.. luckily truck had some chrome accents wich let me see it just in time.. car behind me wasn't so lucky as I heard the screeching tires and boom..

new york state thruway, double ladder across both lanes. not very weird, just extremely dangerous...

Had about a 40 lb snapping turtle in my lane yesterday.  No room for him in the backpack though.  They are good eats!

32' Extension ladder and two cars skidding sideways to avoid it after it fell off a pickup truck on 495.

Contractors bag full of cut up 2 x 4s, drywall and insulation debris.  Car in front of me swerved just in time as did I.  The douche behind me in a Black VW Golf wasn't so lucky.  I call him a douche because he didn't want to let me merge into semi congested traffic, finally I squeezed in and he tailgated me for several hundred feet.  All I could see was a huge puff of drywall dust, flying insulation and 2 x 4s. 

(BTW, I looked over Ben's car just to make sure it wasn't him) 

 ;D

that is karma.

Yeah, I was a little surprised that I didnt hit the bag.....

 [evil]

I stay clear of pick up trucks with tools and ladder etc tied down.  I do not trust it is secure and assume it will get me.  I try avoid it as much as possible.

 
Ducatiz - r u serious, a land mine?

wasnt on a bike, but the weirdest thing i've driven over was this huge python in the middle of the highway in kuala lumpur.  saw it at the last second, couldnt swerve, and there was just this "*thump thump*.  my friend in the passenger seats just looks at me and says, was that what i think it was?, i say yeah... and then we just look ahead and keep on going.  haha, thats what really put the fact that i wasnt living in the us anymore into perspective.

and ducatiz... that's nuts.

yes, but considering we were being shot at, it wasn't a big surprise.

the surprise was that they had bungled it and put the fuse in wrong as well, so it was basically just a speedbump.

Not on the bike but in the F250, thought the object looked like a cardboard box . Turned out to be a semi flattened tailgate off a Toyota Pickup.

Was riding home from work a little after 5 am when I pass a tractor-trailer and he starts flashing his lights at me for no apparent reason. I slow down just a tad, but not much. The retaining wall in the middle of the Interstate is blocking my view of the road ahead as it curves left. As I round the curve, I see a U-Haul truck ahead in the emergency lane and I look at it out of curiosity to see what is wrong. Just as I look at the road again, I am faced with a complete wheel assembly, still attached to the hub, that had come off of the huge U-Haul truck. I had no time to react and luckily miss the wheel while going 50-60 mph by less than a foot. The trucker I'd just passed was trying to warn me. From that day forward, I take heed when a trucker starts flashing his lights at me.

law school was evidently a lot more hardcore back in the day

lol, that was about a decade before law school!

There was a huge one on RT 6 on Cape Cod in Mass last year, it was in the right lane. We stopped and got it out of the road. Those suckers are pretty strong.

Snowstorm, wife's driving the car, we cruise by a fire truck with lights and sirens on the highway.

"Hmm...where's he going?"

Pickup truck in front of us swerves into the left lane giving my wife hardly any time to recognize a 3-car pile up in the middle lane. The closest vehicle is a Jeep Cherokee that was spun around and lights/4-ways off.

Wife cuts left, but also applies the brakes, and we skid and slam passenger corner to passenger corner at about 25 mph.

I have to say I was in our Ford Excursion with deer slayers when I saw a great dane yes somebody's dog that had got hit and was in the middle of median. It started to limp into 95...yeah lets just say I was pulling dog meat out of my truck for about a 1 week. Fluffie went kaaaaaabooom...I felt bad b/c I looked for a collar and later found it underneath the body wrapped up in a body panel...I called them and told them what happened and the husband was happy b/c he didn't like the dog...

Stalker!

Not on bike, thankfully, but two car in front of me hit a deer at 60 mph on a highway.  Me and the other car had to emergency swerve to avoid carcass and debris.

On bike: they decided to resurface the Westside Hwy in stages.  All of a sudden, I was riding on the middle lane on grated concrete with the two outer lanes ~3 inches higher since they still had asphalt...kept repeating to myself...please don't let me have to change lanes...please don't let me have to change lanes...please don't let me have to change lanes since I was guaranteed to high-side if I was forced to change lanes.

Driving with my wife in Tobago and there was a buck naked Rasta walking down the middle of the street. He had a couple of women shouting at him in town. Must of had an interesting morning!  [cheeky]

lol! 

About a month ago i was riding up 95 n in Foxboro MA and came upon a washing machine in the center lane. I avoided it and then a few miles up the road I saw a pickup truck overpacked with furniture and moving stuff with a washing machine size space free in the back of it.

Told'm?

Anytime I see a pickup truck with work tools,  ladders and cargo type of deal, I stay clear of them on other lanes and speed past.  I do not trust the way people tie their cargo and have heard horror stories.

NM drivers are notorious for not even attempting to tie down stuff in the back of their pickups. I had a ladder fall out of a truck that I was behind for only a second. No chance to miss it, ended up eating asphalt at 75mph. I've seen mattresses just thrown in the bed of a pickup end up catching wind and flying ten feet in the air in the middle of the road. I was with a group that time, and we were right next to him when that happened. I've seen plenty of mattresses and Christmas trees just lying in the middle of the road, and on one occasion a whole couch.

Sheesh, glade I made it safe through nm on the trip to az..  lol ridiculous

Couple of weeks ago, riding about 45 approach a light and I hear a loud noise.  Next lane a u-haul truck has all kinds of shit falling off.  Apparently it was not locked properly and rolled up.  Stupid cager comes out laughing.  Idiot !

One day on a viaduct with no shoulder, I rounded a corner to see a clothes dryer cardboard box in the middle of my lane   :o

Luckily the guy next to me saw it and slowed to let me merge.

101fwy southbound near the 405 interchange back in 2008:

An entire 4x4 transfer case not in the middle of the road per-se, but close-enough.  I avoided it...  But not by much.

Great thread!
[laugh]  Once while driving southbound on upper I-95 NJ I almost hit a transmission from an early model American car, I'd say 70's, looked like a Turbo Hydramatic... Wonder if that's what happens when you throw it in reverse at 80mph, is that what they mean when they say "drop your transmission"?!!!

Jumped a few dead deer, one on I-295 Trenton NJ, others all on I-55 between St Louis and Chicago.  Once they get packed down by a couple of 18 wheelers they make great soft ramps.  Too bad they'd been mutilated beyond making a great dinner...

plenty of boxes, wood, ladders, mattresses, they seem to grow wings and fly away from their owners.  Along with mud and rock slides, we've all seen the roadsigns warning of them, I'll attest that they actually do happen from time to time.

Once, a washout in West Virginia, my lane of the two lane was lost down the mountainside, just absolute pure luck that I saw a large very dark spot in the road ahead and slowed down in time!

But one of the more interesting ones - right outside of Santa Cruz here, a very nice ornate wood dresser, fully upright with all drawers in, standing perfectly square in the left lane of a bit of a curvy four lane.  I expected a four post bed, possibly a couple nightstands and an armiore just past it... What made this one interesting, though, I saw the object a short ways off while I was slipping into the right lane preparing to whip around the guy in the fast lane, a slight bit before he did. So I slowed quick to give him a few car lengths and steered my bike to the far right shoulder for good measure.  A split second later the guy saw it, he must have thought I was still right next to him, as he first tried to aim for the left side of the dresser, between the dresser and the center divide, but there was clearly not enough room for him to fit.  After he exercised some rapid head bobbling and realized he was clear on the right, he served hard to the right at the very last minute and we both got out clean.  He's among a few I've come across that I still thank in my head from time to time, for being first off willing to trash his car if necessary to avoid hitting a motorcycle, and second for being very aware and very quick to look everywhere to reassess his situation while in the throws of his emergency.

In my car, driving through a West VA rainstorm, on a mountain road far from any town, two girls in prom dresses, one yellow, one blue, standing by the side of the road looking like a scene from "Carrie". They didn't try to flag us down, they just stared. My buddy and I, without saying a word, tacitly agreed not to stop. An hour later, on the same mountain road, a woman carrying what looked like a small boat, and wearing nothing but vines.

[laugh] Must've been football season...
 Go Mountaineers!  [thumbsup]

I have come across some things, most recently a small tree covering 75% of the road while carving the NC mountain roads.  Came around a left turn at a good clip with a friend following.  I made the decision to avoid it by riding around the tree into 25% of the lane it didn't cover, which happened to be the oncoming lane.  As soon as I committed a car comes around the bend in front of me.  Luckily, the driver moved over against the guard rail, giving me just enough room to get by as we passed each other.

We immediately pulled over and cleared all the debris.  I think it is your duty to clear an obstruction when you can. I would hate to go down or get hurt because somebody in front of me didn't take responsibility and look out for others.

Kudos!  [thumbsup]

We had a 8 inch turtle walk itself in the middle of a corner on a track day. Does this count?