Motorcycle Views

Wild Motorcycle Tales

Here's a great story from Tumbleweed. Got your own story? Send it to me.

The Coke Can

Back in the late '70s I was flying for a missionary aviation group in Venezuela. My only transportation was a Honda 90 -- I don't remember the exact model. I rode that thing for the eight years I was there and ten years later I heard that someone was still riding it.

In Latin America trash is everywhere. I've often thought that the poverty problem could be solved by having the government pay for trash, with the added benefit that it would clean up the place.

One day I was riding my Honda on a residential street, maybe 25 miles per hour, when I noticed a Coke can directly in front of me. This one was still perfect, hadn't been flattened yet. On a whim I decided to see if I could hit it.

It happened to be perpendicular to my front wheel and I hit it perfectly. I was feeling smug about my precision riding for about two tenths of a second when my front wheel locked up and I went down like a sack of potatoes.

What happened?

I picked myself up and looked at my front wheel. When the wheel rolled over the can, the ends were pulled in and the can clamped itself on the tire, then came up and jammed itself between the forks, locking the front wheel!

A nice lady and her teenage daughter heard the crash and came out to see if I was OK. They invited me into their house to clean up my road rash and offered me a cool drink -- Coke, of course.

I never intentionally ran over a can again. -- Tumbleweed

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