Almost got hit in the head by a live snake on my trip

 Yep. If it wasn't for my cat-like reflexes, it would have hit me. But
you probably don't care how I almost got "puh-tanged" in the head by a
live snake while riding to Tulsa this morning, so I'll get on the rest
of the story.

Buy Frogg Toggs. They work wonders. Got up this morning and it was
raining...hard. Shit. I wanted to leave by 7:00 from Gardner KS to go to
Tulsa. At 7:15 I looked out and it's still raining. 7:30 and still
raining. So I put on my brandy-new never been worn Frogg Toggs. Opened
up the garage door and it had stopped raining and the sun was trying to
peek out. Damn those thing work good. Wonder if they'll also make it
stop snowing? Took off the Frogg Toggs and rode away.

Rode to Tulsa in about 4.5 hours, pretty uneventful except for the live
snake episode. Les took me to a nice BBQ place. (Thanks Les!) I got to
ride in his VW rock climber. Now *that's* an experience. He could take
that to the local amusement park and charge people 5 bucks for a 5
minute ride. So, dropped off all the stuff he won on the Eddie auction,
and I rode home.

Checked my mileage there and back cuz of the new SE-203 cams. The bike
is a stock 2005 EG with a Stage I and the 203s. Put gas in it 4 times,
the MPG varied from 37 to 46. <shrug> I don't think it was all the hills
or curves. <sfsf> Musta been me doing something different. Average MPG
for the trip was 40.3 MPG. 485 miles for the whole trip. Ran fine, too.

I'm gonna post some pictures of several interesting spots I visited on
the way. The bank where the Dalton Gang met it's demise, and the home of
the first space monkey. You folks think you have some exciting scenery
and things to see where *you* ride, but the home of the first space
monkey and a bank where the Dalton's got killed is *real* entertainment.

Andy aka Big Stinkie BS#252 SLOB#3

 On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:06:40 -0500, Andy aka Big Stinkie
wrote:


Sounds like a nice trip.  
OK, now I'll be the first to ask...A snake?

How?

danl

 What me worry? wrote:

(snip bunch of my stuff)


OK. I'm cruising along a 2 lane highway when out of the ditch comes some
sorta bird. Not a hawk...smaller than that, but since things were
happening fast I didn't bother to revert back to my ornithology studies
and try to identify the thing. I was more interested in the long skinny
creature which it was gripping as it struggled to gain altitude. Pretty
big snake, fairly small bird. It's flight path was going to intersect
directly with me if it didn't suddenly find the strength to get a bit
higher, and the damned snake was twisting, turning, squiggling and doing
those "coily-uppie" motions that snakes make when they're being carried
off to be eaten alive. <full body shudder> It took all of two or three
seconds, but at the last moment I ducked, fearing that I was going to
get a face full of corn snake.

It probably wasn't as close of a call as I imagined, but I wasn't going
to take any chances. Imagine trying to tell the doctor at the ER how you
came to have a swollen eye or cut lip. "Well, you see, there was this
bird carrying a snake and..." Doctor says, "Why, of course. Nurse, call
security."

I've had bad luck with birds. A year or two ago I killed three of them
while on the bike, and that many again with the car, and this was all in
about 6 weeks time. Last fall I almost hit a wild turkey that was on his
final approach to a field, and I've had close calls with several ducks.
Smacked a Cardinal once and "poof!," the air was filled with bright red
feathers. It was stuck in the grill of the car when I got home, so my
boy Jim picked a few choice remaining feathers and he still has them in
a box in his room. Also, last year I was on my way home from Boise Idaho
when I saw a sand crane hanging from a telephone wire. Dead. Just
hanging there by one foot. Cranes don't sit on wires. Hmmmm. I wish I
woulda thought to take a picture, cuz that's something you don't see
very often. A dead sand crane just hanging from a telephone wire. With
my luck with birds I'm surprised it didn't fall off the wire and land on
my lap about the time I got there.

Andy aka Big "stupid birds" Stinkie BS#252 SLOB#3

 Andy aka Big Stinkie wrote:

Made me think of a vacation we took, probably around 25 or so years ago,
driving west on I-90 through South Dakota at the time of the Sturgis
rally.  I was mostly jealously watching all the bikes go by and wishing
I was on one of them (didn't have bike worthy of the trip at the time,
and wouldn't have been able to get away on it if I did).  Anyhow, we
came to a fairly long stretch where there were jillions of snakes (well,
hundreds, anyway) sunning themselves on the shoulder.  I thought at the
time they were rattlers, but don't remember really checking -- they
could have been, but might have been something more innocuous.  I could
just picture a bike or car hitting one of them and flinging it up into
the face of a biker -- made me at least slightly more content to be in a
cage.

I've made that trip many times before and since then, and don't remember
another time of seeing even a single snake on the highway, but they
were sure thick that year.

--
Steve Liggett  BS#117 SENS DOF#35
'46 Indian Chief
'66 CL160
'99 XL1200S
'08 FLTR

 Andy aka Big Stinkie wrote:

<snipped>
 JHC Andy! you do seem to have the most interesting ride reports<g> thanks
for the take along, I'm guessing Les and Molly are doing well? haven't heard
much from him lately, but be all that rock climbing. thanks for story, now
where's my beer?


--
Pete
BS198
93 - XLH1200
96 - FXSTS