rhm

Over the years, I've seen a lot of stuff embedded in the asphalt of the city streets I ride over. The variety is endless, far too long to list. But I've been particularly fascinated by bicycle parts, especially those that must have left the bicycle in disabled condition. Once I saw a derailleur pulley wheel, for example; hard to imagine that bike went a whole lot farther that day. Somewhere on Seventh Avenue I've also seen a bicycle chain; next time I see it, I'm going to try to go back and get a photo of that one.

Here's one I saw today:

Do we see one, or possibly two pieces of a Shimano front derailleur? What can we deduce from what we see here... or can we only speculate? Could a car hit bicycle on right side, hard enough to shatter the derailleur cage? Or did it just ... fall off?

Anyone else see stuff like this?

ken cummings

Neat. The best I have seen was a dime. There is the classic story of a road crew back East that could not be bothered to remove a dead deer from the side of a road and they paved over half of the deer. The story is said to have made the National TV news.

cg1985

Here in ypsilanti we have a Bike club.... thing called "Bike Ypsi" It's pretty casual, but its designed to get the non-cyclist into biking or commuting.

My girlfriends father recently started a project for the club members. Called "Bring One Back."

Pretty Dorky name, but the idea is that every time you go cycling, you pick up one thing on your route that could harm a bicycle tire. You take it to the club and then eventually they are going to make a statue out of the pieces put together.

The idea being that if enough people do it, then the roads will be nicer for cyclists.

Not a bad idea. Not sure how this applies, but the picture reminded me of it.

This club also sweeps the sides of road where cycling is popular, its kind of nice. Especially in our ****ty community.

jpdesjar

i started a collection of items found on the side of the road...little toys and tools and metal parts...i like the idea of picking something up each time, i am going to look on my way home today

i haven't been spotting too much lately maybe that has something to do with riding fixed rather than the singlespeed where i could coast and look at the ground more
i can't imagine paving over a dead animal...bizarre

kokomo61

Don't know if a deer was ever painted over, but here's a famous one:

jpdesjar

reminds me of the poor opposum that was hit in front of our house all that remains is the flattened skin, it has been there for a while...maybe i could make a saddle out of it

madcow_number_6

Way out in BFE (Lonoke, AR. google earth link available on request) there is a Super 8 motel with this impression in its parking lot:




Yes that was a frog at one time, now its just an vacancy (haha). Poor little dude musta jumped for it when the concrete smoothing guy came along with his trowel or whatever.

oboeguy

I saw a chainlink on the Williamsburg Bridge the other day.

ax0n

2 miles further:


Strange day that was.

Ka_Jun

What a cool pic, but wtf? Old school roller derby looking roller skate.

ax0n

Not sure what the deal was with that one lone skate. Looked to have been there for quite a while. There is a skating rink just off the MUP about 3 miles north of where I found that.

acroy

FOT (fell off truck)

ItsJustMe

I'm not sure I could find a road hazard every day, there's hardly any that I see every day. For a few days sure, there's a glass bottle that's been on my route for a couple of weeks, and a couple bits of metal, but that's about it.

On Monday I passed, circled back, and picked up a gimongous spike that was in the tire track in my lane near a construction site. It was about a 14" long nail, like a pole barn spike. I circled back, stopped by the side of the road, and while I was waiting for traffic to clear, 5 cars hit it. It jumped every time, it was just a matter of time until it went into someone's tire, and that could have taken out ANY tire.

carkmouch

I know of a AA battery embedded into a back-country byway I found on tour once. I'll have to take a picture of it if I find it again.

JanMM

Don't know that they were a threat to bike tires, but 20+ years ago when I was a daily commuter in Atlanta, I would commonly see smashed, empty model airplane glue tubes on the streets in some neighborhoods. Musta been lots of kids in the 'hood putting model planes and cars together.

rhm

I found that chain I mentioned!


This one is in the middle of 7th Ave, maybe around 36th St, Manhattan.

AdamD

I've seen bird's partially embedded in tar, and then had the joy of watching the exposed part decompose as I rode the same route over time. Sorry, no pictures.

jpdesjar

it's great that this thread has been revived...i have nothing to report on my route but i always keep my eyes peeled

rugerben

There's part of a Poland Springs water-bottle in the pavement on the MUP about 1/2 mi from my house.

El Pelon

Tijuana has great road kill. And, they don't remove the dead. You can watch the progression of decomposition over a period of time. There's a dead dog I have been tracking on the Via Rapida for about three or four weeks. It started out as fresh kill. After a couple of days, the body bloated up, and then it split open. It smelled horrible, and there were flies and maggots, etc. Over the past two weeks it has deflated, and now it is pretty much an empty shell. Looks sort of like a deflated football with hair.

CliftonGK1

Not embedded in the pavement, but I did ride past a field with a whole truckload of 'shrooms (yes, those kind) growing in it. Probably enough to fill both my bucket panniers. I've seen lots of them around in the past couple weeks, but this was by-far the largest single patch I've seen.

cyclokitty 

I experienced the same thing on my commute but it was a large raccoon. It took quite a while before it went from a dead raccoon on the road to a slick piece of velum. Of course, the corpse had to be just left of where I ride my bike. It smelled horrible, looked awful and took a long long time before it finally disappeared.

777arty

best laugh of my day. thanks.

SlimAgainSoon

That chain pic is now my computer-screen background!

Flimflam

Wow, interesting that this thread shows up now... Only last night did I see a key embedded into the road - something I'd never seen before and thought was pretty odd/interesting.

I've not really seen bike parts that I can recall, but there's plenty of crap like beer caps around.