If you ride a motorcycle, you already
know enough to stay away from rattlesnakes and marijuana – at least
until you park the bike. Some, however, are not as smart as you, the
esteemed CMG reader.
Take for example a U.S. motorcyclist who was carrying a
dead canebrake rattlesnake on the back of his bike on Dec 5.
New Orleans police say the rider was
about to enter a curve when he turned around to check the snake,
which had begun flapping after the twine it had been secured with
came loose.
While distracted, he hit a curb, and the subsequent
crash, if not the cause of it, was not funny at all. Well, at least not for him.
Police did not know how the rider got
the five-foot-long rattlesnake, but said its tail and fangs had been
removed. The rider fared only slightly better – although the last we heard,
he was still alive.
Then there’s actor Laurence Fishburne who was rattled himself not long ago. He said in the
latest issue of Forbes Magazine that getting high and riding
motorcycles may not actually be a smart thing to do.
Fishburne was riding with architect
Frank Gehry as passenger when he “freaked out” as the bike
started to feel loose. He had toked up with friends just before the
ride.
He didn’t crash, but said later it “was
probably the most foolish thing I ever did on a motorcycle.”
Fishburne called Gehry “the world’s
greatest living architect.” We can only imagine what Gehry called
Fishburne.
And finally, in the spirit of the season, a New England man lit up more than a Christmas tree while attempting to string lights. While pulling an extension cord that was attached to a string of lights out of his garage, the man knocked over another (plugged in) light, which shattered next to his gas-powered weed-eater. That went up in flames, which in turn caused a fueled-up motorcycle gas tank to explode.
Nobody was hurt, but the fire caused about $20,000 in damage. And they say that Christmas can be a depressing time of year.
No shortage of idiots. Not that that’s news …