Collecting Wild Animals (aka: Don't Ride at Dawn)

**Gremlin** · 22nd December 2008, 06:56

Having done my fair share (and then some) of riding at dusk, night, dawn etc, it doesn't come as a surprise when you see wildlife all over the road, but sometimes certain rides stand out more than others.

Last night/This morning was one such ride. Poor GiJoe was unable to come, but I was determined to clock up a few kilometres, as it was needed. Route sorted, looked to be around 950km. Eventually set out at 8pm last night, half thinking I should probably be in bed before dawn (which of course I wasn't).

The ride itself was good enough, nice roads etc. At first, only one incident stood out to be remembered. Preparing to tip into one long sweeper, doing around 120, it came to my attention rather quickly a hedgehog was contesting the right to the very bit of road I fancied. It does wonders for ones concentration, ability to change line, and still go around the corner.

The middle part of the ride was spent dodging/chasing wascally wabbits, dodging dozy hedgehogs and trying to minimise the number of moths that went splat on my visor.

That was, until I came up 22 while dawn was breaking. I swear I had to avoid at least 6 animals every minute, collected 2 wabbits (my suspicions were correct, hitting one won't make turn you into superman, you just feel a thud), rode over a hedgehog and going around one corner, bang smack, a bird in the middle of the visor. Spent about the same time dodging animals as paying attention to the road. Certainly made life interesting after covering 7-800km already.

Oh well, thats my humour story for the day... Animals are in abundance at dawn

**kevfromcoro** · 22nd December 2008, 07:01

Riding up the coast a few days ago
and here comes a duck..
sconed me right in the side of the helmet.
lucky wasnt a few secs later
would of coped it in the face

**Bass** · 22nd December 2008, 07:39

Rabbits and Hedgehogs......that's just training for the main event.
Kangaroos and Wombats!!
Ducks.....been there.....hurts.
But eagles.......now there's a challenge, but admittedly limited to daylight

**pritch** · 22nd December 2008, 07:52

I did an early morning ride home from Turangi once. I never knew there were so many hawks around, and some of them were huge. Especially when seen up close - very close sometimes. Ducking and weaving on the bike like I was auditioning for Rocky 3.

Hawks don't have to hunt anymore they just fly up and down the road looking for fresh roadkill...

**gijoe1313** · 22nd December 2008, 07:53

Wow for a moment there I thought Gremlin would be making comments concerning loose roaming Tigers and Giant Orb spider webs stretched across the road!

Yes, I was missing the chance for another good pootle - but never fear, there are always more rides!

I got updates from Gremlin at varying points of time in the wee hours of the morning. I was sore tempted to get up and ride out myself! I felt like ground control tracking an extra-terrestrial object hurtling itself around the earth!

I'm amazed that's all the things he had to deal with this time around - I'm sure there was fog and missing out on a good meal and having to cope with servo snacks!

Good on ya Gremlin, remember we got to get in plenty of practise for our invasion of the mainland!

**Gremlin** · 22nd December 2008, 08:16

Originally Posted by gijoe1313

I'm amazed that's all the things he had to deal with this time around - I'm sure there was fog and missing out on a good meal and having to cope with servo snacks!

Good on ya Gremlin, remember we got to get in plenty of practise for our invasion of the mainland!

Oh yes, I was just pointing out animals... fog was in abundance from around 3am to 6am. I remember the bike reporting air temps of around 10-12 degrees, until I rode into seriously thick fog, then suddenly the temp isn't going over 6 degrees.

At times, visibility was down to less than 10m, and I was rather glad the animals had buggered off at that point, as I couldn't really make out the road anyway, and was using the road markers and cats eyes to figure out where tar was.

Then the GPS gave me another adventure. When I created the route, in one section, I said, go from Te Kuiti to Te Uku... it decided it rather fancied sending me down roads with no centre lines, lefts and rights all over the place, and then 13km of slippery gravel.

**gijoe1313** · 22nd December 2008, 08:36

That's more like it

So no banjoes in the hills moments then hmm?

**DarkLord** · 22nd December 2008, 08:53

Hawks and seagulls are also pretty bad. Big bastards, and take forever to take off and quite often fly right in front of your path. I've had a few close calls with those, and yesterday on a big ride from Taupo to Auckland I ducked and missed a bird by about an inch.

Another fun thing is riding at night - watching all of the moths coming towards you and actually seeing them hit your helmet. The worst is when you don't wear any kind of a neck cover and start copping hits in the neck from bugs/stones etc - I got hit in the neck at least 3 times yesterday. Good fun.