Posted on 07/19/2004 9:01:53 AM PDT by BluegrassScholar
Town of Waukesha - Motorcyclist Daniel Buckel was within 10 feet when he saw the potential disaster stretched across a dark and foggy rural road just ahead.
Disbelief turned to fear, then anger, as Buckel's 2-year-old motorcycle hit a barrier of kitchen-variety plastic wrap that was wound thickly from traffic pole to traffic pole on opposite sides of Guthrie Road, south of Highway I.
The clear plastic trap, which was 3 to 4 feet above the two-lane road south of Waukesha, sent both Buckel and his passenger, girlfriend Theresa Brzykcy, into a bloody slide across the asphalt.
"It's appalling, and it's really frightening," Brzykcy said. "What was their intention? This should make people more aware that pranks like that are not as harmless as they seem.
"They had done a pretty thorough job. It was wrapped around pretty thickly," she recalled.
The malicious prank has Waukesha County sheriff's investigators concerned because other capers involving plastic wrap occurred in the town last year, although none was as serious as the motorcycle crash early Tuesday, Sheriff's Detective Steve Pederson said Friday.
Investigators were planning to canvass homes near the crash site this weekend, looking for information that will lead to a break in the case.
"When something like this happens someone always brags about it," Pederson said. "If anyone has heard anything about this or any other incident involving (plastic) wrap, contact us.
"Maybe someone had seen this happen or removed (plastic) wrap from other areas," he said. "We'd like to know about it."
Last year, a number of parked cars were found bound in plastic wrap to prevent drivers from getting inside the vehicles, Pederson said. Plastic wrap bonds together, giving it strength and making it difficult to remove.
Pederson said investigators were unaware of other incidents of wrap being stretched across a road.
The couple's injuries sent both to Waukesha Memorial Hospital. Buckel, 22, of the Town of Waukesha, required 15 stitches to close a deep gash above his right eye and also broke a finger. Brzykcy, 19, of Brookfield, got a deep cut and bruise to her right cheek along with other scrapes and bruises. The motorcycle was a total loss, Buckel said.
The 1 a.m. ride was supposed to be a short one meant to relax the couple, who have known each other for more than a year. He had just left his bartending job, and she was waiting for him at his family home. Earlier she had taken his mother to a medical appointment.
Buckel said he was driving 5 mph under the 45 mph speed limit because the motorcycle headlight had shone on deer along the road and there was a slight haze from ground fog in the low-lying area.
"I didn't see it," Brzykcy said of the barrier. "He braked so hard I figured it was a deer. My first hit was on him, which totally saved me. Then, I landed on my head (on the road). Everything went white and yellow and red, and I blacked out for a while. I woke up on my back, laying in a driveway."
Buckel, fueled by anger and concern for Brzykcy, fought off his own pain and called 911 on his cell phone, he said. Among the first emergency personnel to arrive was Beckel's best friend, Scott Sommers, a member of the Town of Waukesha Fire Department.
"I ran over to my girlfriend and looked around to see if the pranksters were still around," Buckel said. "I didn't see anyone. When my friend arrived, it made things a lot easier to cope with."
Welcome to the human race...
That's funny, all I could think of was "I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram on a silver black phantom bike..."
Were those COOKED pinto beans?
Raw so they would sprout.
I was also transported back to my childhood... as a little kid, we had a corner lot on an old rural road, and I used to build snowmen in my yard as most kids do. However, a couple of teenage punks would come tearing down the road at night and cut across our lawn and run over my snowmen... So, one day I built my snowman around a fire hydrant, completely hiding it...
Let's just say that their habit of cutting across our yard came to an abrupt halt that night...
He should be glad it was not wire .... he'd be missing a head
Pardon my ignorance about sugar beets, but why would they be any worse than any other plant?
We used to throw milkweeds at cars driving by on a nearby road. Just sit out in the field, standup, throw, duck... Messy stuff, those milkweed things.
One day I had one sail into an open window, hit a county deputy in the face, and apparently knocked his cig out of his mouth... I'm guessing it was a cigarette because he STARTED to chase us (about 8 years old) but he turned around and noticed the front seat smoking... We noticed it, too. And ran as fast as our little feetsies would carry us...
Somehow, the guy knew it was me, and was waiting at my house when I got there. I denied up and down that it was me, but everyone knew it was me... He let my parents handle it.
I never did that again. (and by that I mean, we always made sure it wasn't a cop first)...
http://www.amadirectlink.com/justice/index.asp
Loud pipes may not always save lives, but if they get the cell-phone distracted morons to look, they just might.
Keep the faith and the shiny side up.
I think it was because they can grow into huge, broadleaf, dard green plants that are difficult to eradicate. It may have been because the sugar company was convenient for the seeds. I do remember that stadium having some really dark green spots where they couldn't remove the plants. They ended up re-turfing. Oops.
SUGAR BEETS
"A mature sugar beet measures up to a foot long, weighs three to five pounds and can produce about five ounces of sugar. Roughly 18 percent of the beet is pure sugar." said Michigan Sugar manager of communications Mitch Reno. These beets, which grow from tiny seed to burly beet in just one growing season, can have tap roots as deep as ten feet in a dry year. Mahar added, although typically they stay in the four-to five-foot range.
"Michigan is a wonderful, reliable place to grow sugar beets," Mahar said, thanks to its overall weather and particularly autumn’s sunny days and cold nights. "When it’s cooling down at night the sugar drops from the foliage into the beet plant. The sugar beet pretty much can handle all problems of nature - drought or damp. In the early part of the century black-root disease and blight were common out west," he said. But Michigan is a fairly disease-resistant state. "The bitter cold of January and February just sanitizes our soil." A more difficult time was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when soft-drink bottlers switched from sugar to high-fructose corn sweetener. "That cut down the sugar consumption in the United States," he said. "[When] all of a sudden somebody comes out with this other kind of sweetener and takes away Coca-Cola, you’ve lost a pretty good-sized customer."
The sugarbeet plant is a root crop which grows underground. When fully grown, a sugarbeet weighs two to five pounds and produces about three teaspoons of sugar. Michigan sugar beet farmers harvested 130,000 acres of crop in 1996, ranking Michigan 5th in the nation in sugar beet production. Michigan's Saginaw Valley and Thumb area, along with the southeast corner of the state, produces more than 90% of the sugar beets grown east of the Mississippi River. The high quality sugar is a result of growers and companies working closely together to ensure that each crop of sugar beets uses the "best management practices", resulting in a healthy product at harvest.
Mention the word sugar, and many people think of what one adds to coffee (white sugar, sucrose). Other types of sugar include confectioners sugar - a combination of table sugar and corn starch - and maple sugar, a sucrose that is contracted from the sap of a maple tree.
Not all sugar beets are processed into sugar, however. Beet pulp is used as cattle feed and dog food. Molasses, a byproduct of processing, is used to make citric acid, vinegar, yeast and antibiotics.
Michigan is a major grower/producer of sugar beets. ("B" is the seed.)
Saturday June 17, 2000
Tree-Cutting Prank Takes Life Of Motorcyclist GRANVILLE COUNTY (WRAL) -- Someone is deliberately cutting down tree branches and laying them on roadways across Granville County. The incidents have resulted in three wrecks and the death of one motorcyclist. Pete Hicks was thrown 75 feet when his motorcycle hit a tree that was stretched across Mumms Road 12 a.m. Saturday. Friends describe Hicks as a man who loved his family and his Harleys. "He was a hardworking, everyday type of guy that provided real well for his family, his children," says Hicks' friend David Kennedy. The 18-inch tree trunk was deliberately cut so it fell across the road. Another driver swerved to avoid the tree moments before Hicks slammed into it. Alvin Hobgood called 911 from his house about a quarter of a mile away from the accident. He says he was stunned when he learned the incident was no accident. "You just go around asking yourself why, trying to reason why this would happen and why it was done," Hobgood says. Minutes earlier on Highway 50, a car slammed head-on into a tree in the road. Another tree was cut on Old Weaver Trail in Durham County, but it did not fall across the road. Both trees were cut in the same fashion as the tree in Granville County. Hicks' family and friends find it hard to comprehend why anyone would set a deadly prank. They say they want the suspects caught. "If they think this is fun, maybe someone needs to strap them on a Harley and put a tree across the road and let them go across," Kennedy says. Hicks would have celebrated his 40th birthday on Saturday. Hicks' family and friends have put together a $7,500 reward for anyone that has any information about the crime. Investigators say that since the prank was so premediated and deliberate, a murder charge could be possible.
This guy was my friend..
"Let me just guess here:
Harley with open pipes, he regularly takes these 1 AM rides;
Maybe one of his neighbors is not so amused?"
Not being amused by someone's motorcycle does not give anyone the right to harm that motorcyclist. I'm amazed that you are trying to justify this.
I know what you mean.
I used to live on a canal house on davis island in tampa florida.
We had a christ craft cabin cruiser and it had a 327 chevy engine.
Well the intake manifolds didn't work too well on it and we'd blow an engine every once in a while.
So my brother and I usually had an extra engine in some
point of rebuilding.
Once complete we'd chain it to a couple of pillars on the patio and using an electrical fuel pump we'd use a half Gallon of gas and run it on the back porch without any EXHAUST MANIFOLD.
mAN WAS IT LOUD.
gREAT FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY OR New years.
Are you sure you guys weren't blowing motors because of burnt exhaust valves? :(
Man, that's just wrong. Sorry about your friend. Yes, there are some a-holes who get off on screwing with motorcyclists, especially in traffic. All I'll say is that if anyone effs with me or my buds in traffic, they'd better kill us.
In my younger and more stupid days a friend of mine and myself had Honda XL250R dual-purpose bikes while were stationed in MS. We rode those darn things EVERYWHERE!
One day a couple in a car cut us off and ran us off into a field and laughed about it. Big mistake! We brushed ourselves off, fired up the bikes and chased them down. We (here comes the stupid part) kicked the sh!t out of their car travelling down the road at 60+. They could have run us off the road again and really hurt us. That was a case of too much youth, testosterone, beer, stupidity and adrenalin at the same time. I realize were were terribly wrong, but sometimes I still laugh about it.
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