Columba livia at 3 o'clock!

I was taking my daughter's Gilera Coguar 125cc for its MOT. I had managed
to get it up to an indicated 70 mph on a slightly downhill section of the
A12 when I suddenly noticed a movement from low down on the right hand side
of the road. A small dark object rapidly became larger - a pigeon had taken
of and was now heading directly for me. Those fuckers can get up to speeds
in excess of 30 mph so our closing speed may well have been approaching 100
mph. A pigeon weighs around 1lb or nearly three times the weight of a
cricket ball. Having seen what effect a 100 mph cricket ball can have on a
batsman I had a brief moment of terror before it whizzed over my shoulder
with about 3 inches to spare. So, that got me to wondering - does anyone
here know of anybody actually being knocked off a bike by a bird?
(Feathered, flying type - girlfriends, frozen chickens etc, don't count).

 

TMack says...

In 1982 I had a blackbird hit me in the shoulder head as I was doing
about 70ish. It knocked my hand off the bar and left its beak in my
shoulder. I had a black bruise about 6 inches in diameter there the next
day.

 

Was the blackbird OK though?

 

I hit a blackbird with my bash hat on the A47 a couple of years ago . I was
doing about 80ish when it came across the road from my left. I just managed
to get my head down enough to catch it on the top of the visor. Still had
some of the wing feathers stuck in the top of the visor when I pulled over,
and a load of bird innards spread across the top of my crash helmet. It
didn't feel like I was in danger of coming off but I guess it spread the
inertia quite well by coming apart?

 

Plastics would've been broken, I reckon.

 

Steve Parry says...

As half of it was spread across my leather jacket, no.

 

What about the other half?


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

Beav says...

Stop asking me stupid questions.

 

I had a pigeon him me in the face a few years ago. I'd just pulled away
from a petrol station so wasn't going too fast (20 - 30) but I'd got my
visor partly open and it managed to break the mounting point on one
side. Don't know which bits of the pigeon broke, I didn't stop to find
out...

--
The From address is a spam-trap, so all replies to the newsgroup please.
{Mine} | {Moto Guzzi V11 Sport Rosso Mandello}
{Hers} | {Ducati M750 Monster}
{Ours} | {Kawasaki GPZ 500S}
~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nail 'em up, I say! Nail some sense into 'em! ~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A mate had a pigeon glance off his chest, just above his left nipple. He

Likewise, doing 35/40 and got hit head on on the top of my head. Lucky I
wsn't going any faster as I'd have proably been off.. Had a very stiff neck
for a few days

 

I hit a pigeon with my right foot at 70 mph just as I was slowing
down for the speed limit outside Tamworth (NSW). Hurt like hell and my
boot was covered in pigeon innards, but I didn't get a bruise AFAIR. All
I saw of the pigeon afterwards (apart from the bit smeared across my boot)
was an explosion of feathers in my rear-vision mirror.

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Got hit by a pigeon on the helmet a few years ago. I was doing 90, I
was criminally not paying enough attention to assess the speed of the
pigeon. Fortunately I ducked my head just before impact so the shock
went straight down my spine rather than imparting a lateral blow so my
progress was not interrupted. Plenty of guts and feathers on the
helmet though.

 

Right, Zaphod.

 

I once went on the Tube with a mate dressed as Zaphod. Took me a good ten
minutes to work out why people were staring at us. Mind, it could have been
because of what I was wearing, I guess.

Ali

 

<sigh>

and?

 

Yes, I was waiting to see if you'd ask.

Green Orion Slave Girl from Star Trek. (The pilot episode called _The Cage_
for the anoraks out there.)

Ali

 

I remember at least one episode that had a green woman in it.

Actually, I don't recall where I heard this so could be a) a ginge and
b) apocryphal, but apparently when they got the rushes back after the
first take, the girl's skin looked almost normal, so they painted her
an even more vivid green and re-did the scene.

Again, she wasn't really green enough, so they tried again.

Later, talking to the developer, he came out with a comment along the
lines of "You need to have a look at that girl's complexion. It took
ages to make her skin look normal".

 

It may or may not be a ginge, but it's quite true.

 

The Orion slave girl thing was in more than one Classic Trek and some
subsequent variants.

It is indeed, says the anorak who ran SF cons and has been on several
variants of the Trek set.

Oops, namedrop, there.

Ali

 

Now I'm the green one.