awesome snake story
So, totally NOT trying to one up, that was awesome, and reminds me of a little story that I think is appropriate here.
Some years ago I was leading a construction crew on a swing from the Pacific Northwest in a big arc down through the Southwest and back. We built several sites. I think it was about a 10 week trip.
One young fellow on the crew, we will call him Ben, good hand, runs his own crews up in Alaska now, was adventurous and decided to ride his KLR 650 on the trip. If you aren't familiar with these bikes they are the quintessential old school "dual sport", a cross between a road bike and a dirt bike, a bit more dirt bike than the modern "adventure" bikes. What this means in practice is that, while they are good reliable machines, they aren't particularly good at anything; wobbly and blown around on the highway and heavy-ass pigs in the shit.
Ben was a trooper and stuck with it most of the trip, but as the jobs wore on, long hours, stress, uncomfortable cheap hotel beds, the allure of wrestling the bike rather faded.
We finished up the last big set and just had a couple little inspection and maintenance gigs on the way back. I put the other guys on a plane home and we loaded Ben's bike on the trailer with a bunch of leftover parts and pointed it North.
One of our last responsibilities was to access a remote site North of Susanville, CA, pull some data and troubleshoot why the thing wasn't calling home. We had built the site the previous year and knew that access was pretty bad, particularly as it was getting well into early winter and moisture was an issue.
We were in an F350 4x4 diesel quad-cab utility body loaded to the gills with tools and parts. We discussed it at length the night before in the hotel. We were faced with the prospect of dropping the trailer and unloading a ton of crap to get the rig in a state to even attempt it, and we knew that even then it was going to be touch and go. Ben volunteered to ride in and make the visit saving us a lot of work.
We got up to the landing and got him on his way and I hunkered down in the truck and tried unsuccessfully to get some extra sleep. It was roughly 4 miles in and he had probably 40 minutes of work on the site. Well, about three hours later I started thinking he was overdue. As time went on I became increasingly concerned until at the 5 hour mark I was actually suited up and just starting to drop the trailer to go investigate when he finally rolled up.
He had ridden in without great difficulty, had a bit of frustration with the computer but not too bad, and had headed back down in good time. Part way back he was on a steepish downhill stretch where one wheel track was washed out pretty good so he really only had one bike lane and...there was a badger chilling right in the middle of it.
He honked his horn and hollered at it but the badger made absolutely no indication that it perceived him at all. A few kicked rocks likewise had no discernible effect, so Ben inched the bike forward and bumped it on the ass with his front tire.
This got the beast's attention and it turned abruptly and snapped at him. He dumped the bike over backwards and scrambled back up the hill a ways. He tried throwing sticks and more yelling to no avail and ended up sitting on a rock some ways off until the badger got bored or had some other important badger stuff to do and wandered off.
Anyway, I shit you not, that's how he told it, I thought that fit here somehow.
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