Weird things you see on the highway

[Iron Brew]

Originally Posted by catnthehat

The first time I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 to work I was astounded !
Never saw one up here before ,
Now the danged things are everywhere!
Cat

I’ve never seen a woodchuck driving, but i have seen them up a tree. Dad called me a liar (or drunk or... was many years ago). Three days later he apologised.

[Okotok]

Originally Posted by Iron Brew

I’ve never seen a woodchuck driving, but i have seen them up a tree. Dad called me a liar (or drunk or... was many years ago). Three days later he apologised.

Here's photographic proof for you.

[kidd]

Originally Posted by forestrover

Years ago I was minding my business driving near Hwy 2 north of Edmonton. I saw an old car with some type of giant rug on the roof in my rearview mirror. I thought nothing of it until it pulled up in beside me.

I see an old Cowboy driving with a buffalo in his car.
My eyes were as large as saucers, for a split moment I thought I was hallucinating.
I found a pic online of the guy. 'Berta!

This is a true photo. I saw this guy with the buffalo in a parade in Lamont, AB several years ago. Was throwing candy to the kids.
kidd

[Scott N]

Originally Posted by forestrover

Years ago I was minding my business driving near Hwy 2 north of Edmonton. I saw an old car with some type of giant rug on the roof in my rearview mirror. I thought nothing of it until it pulled up in beside me.

I see an old Cowboy driving with a buffalo in his car.
My eyes were as large as saucers, for a split moment I thought I was hallucinating.
I found a pic online of the guy. 'Berta!

The dog in the backseat looks like he's doing some fine backseat driving there.

[KGB]

Holy clap! That’s unreal! Pretty cool video. Now I have seen it all!

[does it ALL outdoors]

Me and a buddy were on our way to Marmot for the day and an 18 wheeler 100 yards in front of us took a 45 straight into the ditch and rolled.

That gets the adrenalin pumping at 6 AM.

Helped the driver get out and waited for first responders who were the RCMP.

He saw my friends tinted windows and told him if they were still tinted when we come back through he was going to impound his Tacoma, nice fellow

Pulled many people out of rollovers on 881 between Lac la biche & Conklin over the last 10-12 winters. In bad weather we would expect to see wrecks, and were rarely disappointed. At the height of the boom there was one fatality a week on that road. Glad to be off that road now.

A co-worker witnessed a rollover and went to check his temple for a pulse and was missing half of his head, reached around and touched his brains. Glad that was him & not me.

[260 Rem]

A few years go, very icey, a woman driving a SUV in front of me managed a slow motion roll over with the vehicle coming to rest on the roof...not a lot of damage. Passenger widow was broken and when I got down to take a look inside, the lady was hanging upside down (in the seat belt) talking to her husband on the phone. I got her to give me the phone, told hubby to stand by as she was then pleading with me to get her loose. I actually thought about crawling in and releasing the buckle but called 911 first ....to be told to leave her hanging because she might break her neck if I let her drop. All ended well.

[270person]

Originally Posted by catnthehat

The first time I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 to work I was astounded !

If I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 I'd be astounded too. I didn't even know they could get a license and insurance.

[MountainTi]

Originally Posted by catnthehat

The first time I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 to work I was astounded !
Never saw one up here before ,
Now the danged things are everywhere!
Cat

Originally Posted by 270person

If I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 I'd be astounded too. I didn't even know they could get a license and insurance.

I'd like to say I'm astounded that a woodchuck would get hired on to work up in Ft. Mac, but I'm not. I'm guessing union...

[urban rednek]

Originally Posted by 270person

If I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 I'd be astounded too. I didn't even know they could get a license and insurance.

With a couple bucks and the right Driving School, anyone can get a license in Alberta.

[270person]

Originally Posted by urban rednek

With a couple bucks and the right Driving School, anyone can get a license in Alberta.

Bucks are driving now too? Well I'll be jiggered.

[jzz30tt]

Hahaha. Bailey the Buffalo. Jim is a good guy.

[270person]

Originally Posted by MountainTi

I'd like to say I'm astounded that a woodchuck would get hired on to work up in Ft. Mac, but I'm not. I'm guessing union...

Has.

[Red Bullets]

Doing a hotshot to Cold lake country back in the 80's I was pretty drowsy driving back to Nisku at 3 am. And all of a sudden there is a set of heavy duty pallet forks on the highway right in front of me. I managed to swerve and stomp on the brakes at the same time and missed hitting them. I backed up and it took me almost an hour to load the forks into the 1/2 ton truck. They were really heavy. If a car or truck would have hit the pallet forks would have been game over. When I got to the office at Nisku the bossman gave me 1K for the pallet forks.

And one time in 1990's I was driving home at 3 am from work in an Edmonton shop and on highway QE 2 south of the ellerslie road going south of Edmonton, no traffic , thank lord, all of a sudden I see big pieces of steel all over the highway. Like big enough to rip the wheels off of a car. So lucky there was not even a bit of traffic. I stopped quickly and started dragging these heavyweight chunks of steel off of the highway. The steel pieces were bolted together and turned out being 48 inch heavy duty pipe clamps. There were six units and each unit being 2 pieces bolted together and weighed 160 lbs. It took me a long time again and I got them loaded in my truck. Not a vehicle had gone by the whole time I had this happen. The next day I shopped around with the yellow pages phone books for companies that built big pipe clamps. There were only two in Edmonton that built big clamps. I inquired as to the price of such clamps and was quoted 1.4 K each delivered. There were 6 clamps. One of the companies was quite frantic when I told them I had found their clamps on the highway. The clamps had been loaded on a truck earlier on the night I almost hit them and was destined for Texas ASAP. I told the company where I found them and how they could have killed a few cars and people. The company gave me a cash reward of 3K for returning them.

In both incidences luckily I never had another vehicle pass by me the whole time I was moving these killer chunks of steel off of the roads. Oddly both were on 2 of the major highways where the loss of life was very possible because everyone is driving at 100km or more. It explains how there are so many accidents on straight roads too. Damn truckers with unsecured loads.

[thumper]

Originally Posted by MountainTi

I'd like to say I'm astounded that a woodchuck would get hired on to work up in Ft. Mac, but I'm not. I'm guessing union...

That I can believe, but how can a buffalo riding in a convertible throw candy to kids ?

[Oldan Grumpi]

That last post reminded me of one that happened a long time ago. Not exactly on a highway, but sort of!

In ‘65 or ‘66, I and another kid were walking two D7Es out of Rainbow Lake at spring breakup, on the old original Keg River winter road, which by that time was already too muddy to haul on. Part way up the south hill on the Chinchaga I spotted a piece of pipe sticking out of the snow in the ditch. Turns out it was a loaded perforating tool that had obviously been lost during the winter. It had the owners tags plastered all over it, so we knew who lost it. Naturally, we wrestled it up on the Cat - it was damn heavy - and lugged it home with visions of “beer money” dancing before our eyes. (Hey, we were 19 years old, what can I say...we lived for beer, and had no idea what a loaded perf gun could do to you!)

Anyway, after break up we loaded the tool in our pickup and headed into Edmonton. We took the tool back to L***s United, explained where and when we found it, and asked the manager there what his tool was worth to him. He said “Unload it right over there, before I call the cops and turn you in for stealing it.” So we did - what else could we do? Hell, we’d have been tickled to death with two boxes of beer, but he had to be a jerk.

It took a couple of years, but I eventually got one of their trucks sucked up tight on the end of my winch line. I saw my chance, and I wrote a note on the bottom of the ticket, including their jerk managers name, explaining why the ticket was so big and advising them that if they didn’t pay, ‘next time’ there’d be no truck left when I got done with it. The poor bugger driving the truck didn’t know what to make of it, but he wanted to get unhooked so he signed the ticket. (To begin with, if you bang on the door of a camp shack at 0300 and get some miserable cat skinner out of bed to drag your sorry ass out of the ditch, I think you can expect the ticket to be pretty stiff.)

The guy I was working for thought it was hilarious - in the end they paid and he made sure I got a lot more than the price of two boxes of beer out of it. Things always work out in the end.

[the.tru.albertan]

I just about killed some random guy that jumped out in front of me on Highway 12 just west of Nevis years ago. I was going from Blackfalds to Stettler.

I was going about 115kph in late Oct at 10:30pm. Total darkness. Some hippie jumped out in front of me. Came from out of the ditch to my right. Arms flailing wildly. I had just finished putting a CD in my deck too, so if I had my head down for .5 of a second longer, I would have vaporized that guy.

I swerved to left. Didn't even touch my brakes as there was no time. I avoided him by millimeters.

Of course I turned around to see what the hell he was doing. He said he was riding his bicycle from Red Deer to Stettler to be with his girlfriend....... he was lost.


Oddly, years prior to that in the same location, I came across a middle aged woman carrying a suitcase down the highway at 3 in the morning. I asked her if she needed help and she cheerfully replied "Nope! I'm good!!!" I recognized her as a resident wacko from Stettler.

[ctd]

Originally Posted by Oldan Grumpi

That last post reminded me of one that happened a long time ago. Not exactly on a highway, but sort of!

In ‘65 or ‘66, I and another kid were walking two D7Es out of Rainbow Lake at spring breakup, on the old original Keg River winter road, which by that time was already too muddy to haul on. Part way up the south hill on the Chinchaga I spotted a piece of pipe sticking out of the snow in the ditch. Turns out it was a loaded perforating tool that had obviously been lost during the winter. It had the owners tags plastered all over it, so we knew who lost it. Naturally, we wrestled it up on the Cat - it was damn heavy - and lugged it home with visions of “beer money” dancing before our eyes. (Hey, we were 19 years old, what can I say...we lived for beer, and had no idea what a loaded perf gun could do to you!)

Anyway, after break up we loaded the tool in our pickup and headed into Edmonton. We took the tool back to L***s United, explained where and when we found it, and asked the manager there what his tool was worth to him. He said “Unload it right over there, before I call the cops and turn you in for stealing it.” So we did - what else could we do? Hell, we’d have been tickled to death with two boxes of beer, but he had to be a jerk.

It took a couple of years, but I eventually got one of their trucks sucked up tight on the end of my winch line. I saw my chance, and I wrote a note on the bottom of the ticket, including their jerk managers name, explaining why the ticket was so big and advising them that if they didn’t pay, ‘next time’ there’d be no truck left when I got done with it. The poor bugger driving the truck didn’t know what to make of it, but he wanted to get unhooked so he signed the ticket. (To begin with, if you bang on the door of a camp shack at 0300 and get some miserable cat skinner out of bed to drag your sorry ass out of the ditch, I think you can expect the ticket to be pretty stiff.)

The guy I was working for thought it was hilarious - in the end they paid and he made sure I got a lot more than the price of two boxes of beer out of it. Things always work out in the end.

ha ha ha, serves them right.

[New2Elk]

I was driving down the highway a number or years back with a buddy of mine going from one hunting spot to another. Came around a corner and there was debris all over the highway. Managed to stop just short of a coffee table and a bunch of clothes. Looked like someone had lost an entire load out of their Uhaul around that corner and didn’t notice. It as an entire house worth of items. We started moving everything off to the side of the road so it at least didn’t get run over. Two snowmobilers came and stopped to help as well. Took the 4 of us about 20 minutes just to move everything over. It covered about 75 m of the highway.

[lmtada]

Saw a Buddhist monk in his red robe walking East on #16, around Mannville couple years ago.

[Staystrong]

Once, I saw two foxes fighting with each other on the middle of the road. It was creepy, but memorable.

[bakerman]

There used to be a rooster pheasant a couple miles out of town that would run out of the ditch and chase you down the road for a couple hundred yards. This happened several times in a few weeks before he disappeared.

[KegRiver]

I've seen a fair bit.

Had a tire pass me on #2 south of Nisku years ago. Never found out where it came from.

Just after the Lorena Bobbit affair I found a personal appliance in the ditch while bottle picking. Scared the wife half to death, she thought it was real.

Had a guy pass me north of Manning just as a Deer blasted across the road in front of us. He took the ditch and wound up in Steve Keleman's yard.

Lots of things like that but nothing really unusual that I recall.

[6.5 shooter]

Lots of posts I can relate to late nights..beers ..dinosaurs...etc.

The freakiest was when I was going from Duchess to Brooks and at the #1 over pass, this military dude slowly rises out of the weeds with a bazooka....fortunately I could see down the tube and it was empty...But still makes a guy kinda pucker up a bit.

[Ken07AOVette]

Was in Surrey on the way to see a buddy with the family. Stopped at a red light and locked eyes with a girl across the street. She smiled, turned around and dropped her pants to her ankles, showed us all everything. My young son was quite impressed, wife and daughter not as much.

Much freakier- was in Montana years ago, right downtown Great falls. All of a sudden there was a huge roar, the biggest green semi's I had ever seen. Apparently they were moving nuclear missiles to the silo's. I had no idea what they were at the time, someone local explained it to us later. It was a huge parade.

[catnthehat]

Originally Posted by 270person

If I saw a woodchuck driving up 63 I'd be astounded too. I didn't even know they could get a license and insurance.

Still can’t figure out how it reached the pedals!!
Cat

[RO CC]

Maaaany weird things on the roads.

This chick In the other lane was driving down Crowchild Trail reading a book on the steering wheel, while eating a bowl of noodles with chopsticks.

Another one, this fella driving an 07 Corvette ripped pass me, trying to pull me over coz apparently I had disturbed the road dirt onto his windshield. Haha!

[Hunt4Ever]

I passed this truck down in Mexico on my bike, a little later it caught up while taking a break.

[Okotok]

Originally Posted by catnthehat

Still can’t figure out how it reached the pedals!!
Cat

Sometimes they need a little help!

[Smoky buck]

Originally Posted by Ken07AOVette

Was in Surrey on the way to see a buddy with the family. Stopped at a red light and locked eyes with a girl across the street. She smiled, turned around and dropped her pants to her ankles, showed us all everything. My young son was quite impressed, wife and daughter not as much.

Much freakier- was in Montana years ago, right downtown Great falls. All of a sudden there was a huge roar, the biggest green semi's I had ever seen. Apparently they were moving nuclear missiles to the silo's. I had no idea what they were at the time, someone local explained it to us later. It was a huge parade.

Surrey is a special place lol

Years ago early in the morning seen too girls jogging down the Fraser Hwy wearing nothing but running shoes. All smiles and waving at traffic enjoying the rain