Weird bike rides and stories, ya got one?

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
I'm sure there are some good weird stories out there. I've only been riding like two years, and I've got one.
Last June I went out to do Waywayanda trail maintenance with Black Bear cycling club. We met by the beach area and the maintenance was to be on Plymouth lane, about 2.5 miles away. Jeff said to me “You know how to get there, right? you lead”. I said sure. Maybe he asked me to lead because he knows I‘m a crappy rider and he wanted me out front. So off we go and I’m riding harder than usual so as not to look bad. About a quarter mile in, by the lake I went down hard going over the bars on a rocky spot. Got up and dusted off, I feel OK. I usually recover well from bang ups. Like when I was cutting a tree down years ago and things went wrong and I got hit in the face and got a broken nose, I just shook it off and kept working, or getting hit in the head with a tire iron once and I shook it off and kept working while wiping the blood off my face. So off we go again with me in the lead. Now here’s the weird part. I remember riding on the trail and not knowing which trail I was on. I looked around and just kept peddling. Then I realized where I was and all was good. I have no recollection of getting to this spot which is a mile and a half from my fall. Also, this is NOT an easy ride for me to do normally. I had to ride a low hundred foot long narrow wooden bridge, which I still can’t do, even to this day. How did I do it? Don’t know. Then some rock path through the swampy spot which sometimes gives me a problem. Well, we got there and I do remember doing the trail maintenance and trimming branches. After that we rode back to the cars and some of the group said “Wow, that was some crash. You went to the right and OTB“. I said “Crash?” What crash? They explained it to me and only then did I vaguely remember something about it. I got bruises to my right forearm, right knee, my back, on the right side and top of shoulder, and on my belly and I had chest pains. I was still a little groggy the next day and had a headache. To this day I don’t remember that weird mile and a half of trail I rode. yes, I had a helmet on.

Plymouth TM04.jpg


Plymouth TM05.jpg
 
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Supermoto

Well-Known Member
I ride trails by a college at night. I have seen a lot of weird stuff. The weirdest was three college aged kids dressed in all black, wearing long black trench coats and faces painted white,with funny helmets/ hats, on swing cardboard swords at each other in the middle of the trail. I was hauling ass down the trail on my fat bike, wearing 3000 lumen helmet light. They scattered and ran down the trail in a full panic. They probably thought they were going to get run over by a truck.

All I could think off was Monty Python - run away. Kicking myself for not yelling that as I went by

 

w_b

Well-Known Member
On the late, late, afternoon of 9/12/01, the skies were still devoid of aircraft as we rolled thru the Rocky Point lot of Hartshorne. An eerily quiet loop followed, as we got back to the lot it was very dark, except for this weird multicolored blinky-LED-type device on a small dirt mound near the lot. It was about 8" around by 4 inches high, somewhat irregularly shaped. After the events of the previous day, the caution level was high, and terrorism was on everyone's minds. Nobody wanted to approach this "device". After a few terse minutes I cautiously eased up to it and could see some wires coming out of it, seemingly going into the ground. That was enough for me and my crew and we hightailed it out of there and headed down the 4:20 trail. We never did hear anything about it afterwards, but we all went over what we saw, and had happened, to confirm we were not hallucinating.

So if you left it there, we found it. Nice prank.
 
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jnos

Well-Known Member
I ride trails by a college at night. I have seen a lot of weird stuff. The weirdest was three college aged kids dressed in all black, wearing long black trench coats and faces painted white,with funny helmets/ hats, on swing cardboard swords at each other in the middle of the trail. I was hauling ass down the trail on my fat bike, wearing 3000 lumen helmet light. They scattered and ran down the trail in a full panic. They probably thought they were going to get run over by a truck.

All I could think off was Monty Python - run away. Kicking myself for not yelling that as I went by


LARPers were always a pretty common sighting at the Rutgers Eco Preserve back in the day.
 

huffster

Well-Known Member
Had an interesting experience on a walk/hike with my wife and daughter yesterday. We were about 4.5 miles into our 5 mile walk which included some off-road sections. We cut through a local park and into a small patch of woods and we notice these 2 black boxes up ahead in the middle of the trail.

As we get closer, 1 is open and empty. The other is closed. Our curiosity gets the best of me and I must see if there is anything in the closed one. So, I go to unlatch the door and as it opens , a wild flapping starts from within. I just about jump out of my skin. The 3 of us are wondering who in the hell leaves their bird out in the woods locked up in a box - to die. My daughter recalls seeing someone around the block from us training a hawk in his front yard. She's thinking it's this guy who's maybe decided to give up on his hobby.

I upright the box with a bird in it, and the door flaps open. Now I can see that it is a beautiful red-tailed hawk in there, and one of his talons is tied on to a perch. I'm not about to reach in there and get all scratched up. So, we all agree that we should just walk home and call animal control to handle this properly.

As we head off, we begin hearing a high pitched whistling. Before we exit the woods, we come across 2 guys, 1 with a glove on and they are whistling to another hawk up in the trees. We talked it over and they got quite a chuckle out of our initial interpretation of the situation. Turns out the other bird was going to get his turn next.
 

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
Had an interesting experience on a walk/hike with my wife and daughter yesterday. We were about 4.5 miles into our 5 mile walk which included some off-road sections. We cut through a local park and into a small patch of woods and we notice these 2 black boxes up ahead in the middle of the trail.

As we get closer, 1 is open and empty. The other is closed. Our curiosity gets the best of me and I must see if there is anything in the closed one. So, I go to unlatch the door and as it opens , a wild flapping starts from within. I just about jump out of my skin. The 3 of us are wondering who in the hell leaves their bird out in the woods locked up in a box - to die. My daughter recalls seeing someone around the block from us training a hawk in his front yard. She's thinking it's this guy who's maybe decided to give up on his hobby.

I upright the box with a bird in it, and the door flaps open. Now I can see that it is a beautiful red-tailed hawk in there, and one of his talons is tied on to a perch. I'm not about to reach in there and get all scratched up. So, we all agree that we should just walk home and call animal control to handle this properly.

As we head off, we begin hearing a high pitched whistling. Before we exit the woods, we come across 2 guys, 1 with a glove on and they are whistling to another hawk up in the trees. We talked it over and they got quite a chuckle out of our initial interpretation of the situation. Turns out the other bird was going to get his turn next.
Wow, that's something! I would have been flippin' out!
 

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
I had one not nearly as strange today, I was mapping out s new trail today on the outskirts of Wawayanda. A trail I've never been on before.
It is near another older trail I know that runs through a sandpit. Anyway, today was the day to check it out. As I hiked I thought wow, what
a great trail for riding. Totally doable, maybe not for me, but for most. It is a great ridge that runs just East of the Sawmill Pond Brook and you
can look down about 200 feet and see the brook. Off to the other side it too drops off to a small valley. I mapped the trail at just over a half mile
and was wondering where it would come out. Looking on maps it should come out on Cherry Ridge Rd. This trail is similar to Cedar Swamp trail, or Plymouth Lane. There were many old blow downs that have been cleared over the years and the laurels have been extensively cut back and also
trimmed from the ground. I don't mean the trail is wide by any means, just groomed. Then it comes to a three foot stream and some bogs. That's it.
Dead end. No way out. Swampy and bogs and water. I can't imaging why someone put all this effort into this great trail just to have it stop. Checking
my map at home the trail ends about 1000 feet from Cherry Ridge Road. Damn, that was a nice trail.

Ridges tr11.jpg
Ridges tr01.jpg
Ridges tr06.jpg
Ridges tr08.jpg
 

RSAmerica

Well-Known Member
Back in the '90s riding South Mtn (pre-Embargo), we were riding thru the Tulip Springs parking lot up into the Pine Forest. Back then the Pine Forest had no ground cover, you could see straight thru the forest. At the top of the knoll standing leaning against a large pine tree looking down towards the parking lot was this huge guy with a woman mounted on his dick. As we came up he just smiled and gave us a look like "do you like my trophy", the woman was little embarrassed but they never lost the beat.
 
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huffster

Well-Known Member
I've followed a couple other dead-end trails in Wawayanda like that. Both are off of Cherry Ridge if your interested.

Going from Clinton Rd on Cherry Ridge:
1) After you pass "The Wall" (left) and "Rockadendron" (right), going downhill, there is a curve just before a gate. There is a right turn in that curve. It has a very inviting looking entrance into the rhododendrons. But, its also a dead-end. It goes for a ways though.
2) I don't remember the exact location of this one, but going the same direction on Cherry Ridge, you pass both entrances to White Dot. It's somewhere on the other side of Cherry Ridge in that area. There's an abandoned car down in there.

Sometimes I wonder if someone had an idea on linking a couple of trails and just gave up. On that note...

Thirsty Dog (very technical trail) is another dead-end. I always felt that should keep going and hook back into Turkey Ridge. Now that the new trail (I don't know its official name - referred to as GRAVITY on Strava) was built out there off Turkey Ridge, I think that connecting it to Thirsty Dog could be realized.
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
I'm sure there are some good weird stories out there. I've only been riding like two years, and I've got one.
Last June I went out to do Waywayanda trail maintenance with Black Bear cycling club. We met by the beach area and the maintenance was to be on Plymouth lane, about 2.5 miles away. Jeff said to me “You know how to get there, right? you lead”. I said sure. Maybe he asked me to lead because he knows I‘m a crappy rider and he wanted me out front. So off we go and I’m riding harder than usual so as not to look bad. About a quarter mile in, by the lake I went down hard going over the bars on a rocky spot. Got up and dusted off, I feel OK. I usually recover well from bang ups. Like when I was cutting a tree down years ago and things went wrong and I got hit in the face and got a broken nose, I just shook it off and kept working, or getting hit in the head with a tire iron once and I shook it off and kept working while wiping the blood off my face. So off we go again with me in the lead. Now here’s the weird part. I remember riding on the trail and not knowing which trail I was on. I looked around and just kept peddling. Then I realized where I was and all was good. I have no recollection of getting to this spot which is a mile and a half from my fall. Also, this is NOT an easy ride for me to do normally. I had to ride a low hundred foot long narrow wooden bridge, which I still can’t do, even to this day. How did I do it? Don’t know. Then some rock path through the swampy spot which sometimes gives me a problem. Well, we got there and I do remember doing the trail maintenance and trimming branches. After that we rode back to the cars and some of the group said “Wow, that was some crash. You went to the right and OTB“. I said “Crash?” What crash? They explained it to me and only then did I vaguely remember something about it. I got bruises to my right forearm, right knee, my back, on the right side and top of shoulder, and on my belly and I had chest pains. I was still a little groggy the next day and had a headache. To this day I don’t remember that weird mile and a half of trail I rode. yes, I had a helmet on.

View attachment 46816

View attachment 46817
Otherwise known as you had a consussion?
 
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