The Moose Story
My cousin, after reading yesterday's post, said she would be a moose, not a caribou.
So here's the moose story.
We were on a motorcycle, between Tok and Glenallen, in Alaska. It was a stupid motorcycle, a Honda ST1100, this gorgeous machine that had a spedometer that went up to 160. All I can tell you for sure about that is 120 was not much more than half-trottle and the thing idled at 35 miles an hour.
Beautiful bike. Exactly what you didn't want to have for driving the Alaska Highway.
We came around a corner, and there was a moose in the road. I slammed on the brakes.
Little known fact: moose kill and injure more people than any other large mammal on the planet except hippos--and other people, of course.
Moose started to come towards us, a slow trot.
Clearly, she didn't know what a motorcycle was, but it did not amuse her, and she saw it as a threat. We didn't see the calf hidden in the brush until later, but moose was clearly in attack mode.
Time to get out of there. Problem is, thanks to the basic laws of physics, two people on a grossly over powered bike with way too much rear wheel torque means you don't turn around easily.
I started walking us around.
The moose was about a hundred yards away, starting to come faster.
When the moose was fifty yards away, I started calling back to Lynn that we were going to die soon.
I was not joking.
If I could get this unbalanced bike around just a few more degrees, I could lay on the throttle, we could use that 0-60 in under 3 seconds speed and get out.
This was where it was all going to end for us. No question. Could see the hackles on the moose.
Right about then, a car with Iowa license plates came ripping around the corner, stopped right next to the moose. All four doors popped open, people jumped out, their cameras snapping.
You could see it on the moose's face: I don't know what this thing is, but it just had babies, and I'm getting out of here.
She turned, she ran, she was invisible in the brush in a matter of seconds.
Later, when we got chased by the wolf, we both thought it was just funny.
So here's the moose story.
We were on a motorcycle, between Tok and Glenallen, in Alaska. It was a stupid motorcycle, a Honda ST1100, this gorgeous machine that had a spedometer that went up to 160. All I can tell you for sure about that is 120 was not much more than half-trottle and the thing idled at 35 miles an hour.
Beautiful bike. Exactly what you didn't want to have for driving the Alaska Highway.
We came around a corner, and there was a moose in the road. I slammed on the brakes.
Little known fact: moose kill and injure more people than any other large mammal on the planet except hippos--and other people, of course.
Moose started to come towards us, a slow trot.
Clearly, she didn't know what a motorcycle was, but it did not amuse her, and she saw it as a threat. We didn't see the calf hidden in the brush until later, but moose was clearly in attack mode.
Time to get out of there. Problem is, thanks to the basic laws of physics, two people on a grossly over powered bike with way too much rear wheel torque means you don't turn around easily.
I started walking us around.
The moose was about a hundred yards away, starting to come faster.
When the moose was fifty yards away, I started calling back to Lynn that we were going to die soon.
I was not joking.
If I could get this unbalanced bike around just a few more degrees, I could lay on the throttle, we could use that 0-60 in under 3 seconds speed and get out.
This was where it was all going to end for us. No question. Could see the hackles on the moose.
Right about then, a car with Iowa license plates came ripping around the corner, stopped right next to the moose. All four doors popped open, people jumped out, their cameras snapping.
You could see it on the moose's face: I don't know what this thing is, but it just had babies, and I'm getting out of here.
She turned, she ran, she was invisible in the brush in a matter of seconds.
Later, when we got chased by the wolf, we both thought it was just funny.
posted by e. Readicker-Henderson at 10:13 PM
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