"Morgans" wrote:

It must have hurt, from the volume and amount of yelps he let out.
Fortunately for me, he also hurt enough that he went away to lick his
wounds, instead of messing with me. I was hurting from the impact with the
handlebars, then the impact with the road, then the tumbling and sliding
along the road. Fortunately, my wheel was round enough that it only rubbed
on my fender a little bit, (yeah, right, it almost didn't go around) and I
was able to ride the 2 or so miles home, to properly wash and dress my road
rash.

Heh... I just can't help but relate another of my goofy dog stories.

I was doing a training ride in rural NJ (yes, there is such a thing),
and was laboring up a long hill. On my right was a farmhouse, on land
that rose up to the house from the road, with the farmhouse "on top"
to my right.

The owner of the house and his German shepherd were in the front yard,
and the dog decided that I looked like a good target apparently... he
charged down the hill (from the house) at a perfect intercept vector
to put us both in the same place and time (he'd obviously done it
before).

I mustered up the best uphill sprint I could manage trying to mess up
the dog's trigonometry, but he had a good jump on me, and gravity
working for him rather than against him (like me).

The worst thing was the owner laughing hysterically at his clever
pooch's bad behavior.

As the dog was approaching fast from my right, he decided to jink just
on my side of a telephone pole. I chose that moment to bark at the
dog (I have a tremendous bark that will always stop/reroute any dog
chasing me). It caused ol' Fido to jink to the right in reflex -
which happened to be the very space occupied by a very large telephone
pole.

The dog dead-centered the pole at a dead run, and went down in a heap,
twitching. I continued my sprint up the hill, laughing at the dog's
owner now running down the hill to see how much damage his dog had
done to itself.

Some days you're the bug, other days you're the windshield...

Mark Hickey