We interrupt your pleasant road bike ride to clear the remnants of a huge aluminum busted landscaper rake out of the bike lane instead of swerving into traffic to avoid it.
We now return to your regular programmed ride.
I don’t know about you, but it would be impossible to clear all debris from the side of most highways I ride on. Even stretches that have been “adopted.”
If it’s something that presents a real danger, or if it’s on one of my wife’s bike routes, I’ll stop. But it’s pretty hard to keep up with it all.
Someone asked me recently if I thought someway, somehow everyone could find a way to get along again — as if we ever really got along at some time in history.
I said, “We can’t even get everyone to stop throwing trash on the road, soooo …”
Which reminds me of the most bizarre roadway cleanup I did.
I was out on a rural road and up ahead I saw it. I thought, are you kidding me? Is that a couch in the middle of the road?
As I approached, I watched not one, not two, but three cars slow and swerve around it.
When I got there and dismounted to clear the road I nearly got run over by another car swerving and barely slowing down.
This week’s question, what’s the strangest thing you’ve cleared from the road (not trail)?
I don’t really have anything interesting to offer here. Branches and limbs. Occasional exhausts. Tools. Etc.
My sister and her husband have unofficially adopted some roads near their home. They keep the deposit cans and bottles and collect trash. Then they go to the town dump and tell the guy they cleaned the road so he lets them dump for free. There’s someone, though, who has a Bud tall boy on the way home every day. The number of cans matches the number of days since they last walked. They even know when they’re on vacation because the cans stop.
Their favorite game is ‘What is the persons reason for one a day and toss it rather than take it home. And why don’t they want to get found out?
While Bud Light once dominated the can in the ditch rankings it seems to have been replaced by White Claw with Modelo making a strong run recently
I once found a dildo in the road. Outside a church parking lot. Pretty sure this is worth a guest appearance on The Revolting Podcast.
Also, a motorcycle helmet (what happened to the head?), so many life jackets (they must fly out of boats going to/from Folsom Lake), and mattresses (dumped within a mile or two of the dump, why?).