Stabby stabby stabby!
Found just over the Ottowi bridge. I have been really hurting for road finds the last couple years. Los Alamos is not that big a place and only has a few roads really, so it is difficult to find stuff, not like Knoxville, which was a non-stop road find fiesta. Lots of roads, no one walks around so little competition for tools there in Knoxville. I seem to find lots of utility knives. This is at least number 5, but only the third usable one. By far the nicest too, what with the folding action and the case and the 5 new blades in the handle. I also find an inordinate number of english sockets. Mostly 3/8". What are your common road finds?
I don't count truck lugnuts, but I have a lot of those too, including lots and lots of "locking" lugnuts that obviously don't work. Mostly I only pick those up if they are right next to me at a light. I pick up lots of ejected pedal reflectors off the trails too, but neither are really satisfying road finds. Lugnuts are an impressive amount of machining and plating though for something that falls off so often.
15 comments:
My 6 year old daughter is the queen of road finds. She's very proud of the tools she's found (big honkin pliers and a multi-screwdriver) and likes to remind me how rad she was/is for finding them. When we rode a tandem together, she was really good at finding bling (tiara, plastic flowers, etc) that she then attached to the bike. This bling came in handy when I rode the tandem in our local pride parade last year.
I've never found a damn thing!
Is it because you guys (Americans) drive so many pick-up trucks that stuff keeps bouncing off?
Nice score! My best find thus far is a good quality 14mm combination ring spanner. I was quite chuffed with that. I find lots of bolts, and I once found a very good quality pair of some kind of pincers (if you squeeze too hard it will cut the nail) in a pine forest on a MTB ride.
I found some pliers once, but that was on a motorcycle ride. Very serendipitous though as we needed to tighten a couple of bolts on my mates bike and pulled over to find the pliers at our feet.
Well I have the whole category over at my place so you can check it out, but this is about you, Tarik, and that is a durned nice road find!
This being Iowa I did find a garbage bag full (yep, full) of porn out on an abandoned road once.
John,
Clever to have a dedicated spotter along. I will raise Aida for this purpose.
Antoine,
Yes pickups and drunken tool dropping is the american way!
Lemmiwinks,
I am just chuffed I have you and Antoine reading so we can have antipodal cultural exchanges.
Pickle,
You are a well seasoned roadfinder I know! I have not seen porn along the side of the road in NM, not even once. It seemed to be a guilty southern habit with lots of porn chucked in the gutter in knoxville, but not infrequent in the Bay Area either. I think we lack the population density.
If the number of adult bookstores and strip clubs we have here is any indication, Portland is the porn capital of the world - yet I have yet to find a single example of it in the street. Not even across the bridge in Vancouver, where I'd sort of expect it.
My best road find was a 25 foot Stanly tape measure, but that was in Berkeley. What with all the bikers here, there's just too much competition for the good stuff! Plenty of single gloves, though.
My friend Jim lived and rode in Japan for 2 years and he says it is the road porn capital of the world.
I found a 25 foot ToolShop tape measure once. A Stanley would be nicer!
My last great road find was a Snap-On 19mm combo wrench. I almost never use it but when I need it it's handy.
As far as knives per se: Last summer I found the Park Tool version of one of those stabby stabby things -- in the locked-open position -- inside a box of stock from a small distributor our bike shop occasionally do business with.
I took a photo of the knife, the cut on my hand and the box and emailed the distro asking what they wanted to do. I immediately followed up with a phone call. Was I seriously hurt? No, but really that's not the point. Apparently that WAS the point. Without a real-time video, they said, nothing can be proven either way. They apologized half-heartedly and that was that.
I kept the knife and canceled our account.
All I ever find is broken glass...and only after said glass has "Freddy Krueger'ed" my innertubes.
Actually, I did find a very nice French-made screwdriver the other day...the tip was covered in a tarry black substance that I'm guessing is crack cocaine residue. Gotta hit some better neighborhoods, I guess.
Beat this:
Nikon S7c.
It was inside a little Lowepro camera bag, with a 4GB memory card, full of pictures from about 6 months of travel and highschool events, on my way to work in Nashville. The battery was low, so I didn't look through the pictures much, and my computer didn't recognize the memory card. There was no spare battery or charger, so after I got no responses from a lost and found ad I posted on craigslist, I bought the cheapest charger on eBay. When I charged the battery and looked through the pictures, I found one with the guy who was probably the owner at some social event with a nametag, barely legible. I looked him up and gave the camera back. No reward; he's probably rich and doesn't appreciate the value of his things.
I've found lots of other good stuff, lots of bungee cords of course, many tools and towels and things, a 5 gallon water cooler, a pool-type air mattress, etc. I've found plenty of bling, too, which I give to my 5 year old neice. Tennessee, and probably the southeast in general, is really a great place for road finds.
Awwww, man,
This was before I blogged, but I found a whole big cd wallet once while heading to an early morning ride. Of course some drunkard had lost it out of their car at 2 am or so and I found it before even the paper throwers were moving. Twas the camera comment makes me think of this...
Anyways, the cd's were hilarious, some personal mixes and such, lots of country including the Gourds version of Gin n Juice, and some fun music just to have around. I put an ad in the paper that I had found it with no response so it is all mine.
I rode 45 miles with that thing in my jersey pocket that morning. Long live road finds!
I found a silver cig case in the ditch many years ago (20+). It had 4 soggy joints and a roach in it. The wet dope smell almost knocked me off of my feet. Back in the ditch it went. I've also found the occasional porn mag, lots of pee bombs, sockets, mufflers... anyone ever see underwear? Yep, me too! This year I found an Ipod Nano (4GB) that had been run over about 200 times. Nothing retrievable off of the nano.
Holy crap,
Comment gold!
From the last bunch:
Andrew:
Huh, I bike by the totemic remains of a stanley tape measure every day, it is rusted and broken and three separate sections stick straight out of the dirt along side the trail. Odd as there is nothing within 100's of yards from where it sits. No porn in los alamos roadside. Our community is too clean. Or perhaps early internet adopters...
Pickle:
See above!
Beth:
At least 19s can be used on paul hubs and other weird things, I found a 18mm shorty snapon combo wrench once that I have yet to find a use for. I think some lock nuts use that and maybe surly singulators? But the one I found was too wide for any of those uses. Weird about the stabby knife in the box. Glad you are still with us and carrying a free knife!
Ghostrider:
I am surprised that you don't do better in Florida. It seems that places where everyone drives and no one walks are great places for scoring road finds, but maybe I am giving florida the short shrift.
Alex:
A working digital camera is pretty great. I have found a variety of electronic detritus, unworking over the years, but no cameras. I have found some SD cards that were too smashes to work as well. I love finding photos and slides, but they are very rare these days. I should scan some of the cool ones I have found over the years if I can only figger out what box they are in. Yeah I think TN was great for road find. It was like a tool fiesta when I was there in Knoxie.
Pickle,
Yeah, other peoples mix CD's are great listening. Gin and Juice. Hells yeah.
Adam,
I don't really count pee bombs and underwear as road finds, unless I pick em up, which I don't... I found a Rio mp3 player once, but it did not work, so I tossed it. I expect we will all find old ipods nanos and shuffles more often as they become commodity.
Well! Thanks for all the comments.
Technically, Tarik, that's a slashy knife, not a stabby knife. Slashy slashy!
Olyfixie,
I stand corrected. Slashy slashy slashy!
Post a Comment