On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 1:29:05 PM UTC-7, Ralph Barone wrote:
It’s good to see that everybody has adjusted to their new COVID-19 reality
(whatever it is for each of us), and we can now get back to discussing
important technical matters like “Can you really bang your head on a tree
branch while riding alongside a road?” and “What is the purpose of
government?”

Rather refreshing, I think...

The road was lined by trees in their spring leaves. You couldn't hardly see the upper limbs and who would have expected that the road maintenance people would have allowed not just a branch but a very large and heavy branch to hang over the road like that? Because that is a side road there was no truck traffic that would normally break these sorts of things off.

Because it was hanging over the bike lane, I would have never thought for a second that that branch was there so I was only ducking far enough to keep my eyes below the leaves and my helmet was brushing through the leaves.

I was riding about 15 mph since I had come in from a country road that I was traveling pretty fast on and this area had new residential area I wasn't familiar with. When I struck that branch it didn't even move an inch. It jammed by head down under it and it slowed me down to much that I stopped less than 10 feet from it.

I was sort of shocked for perhaps 30 seconds. Then I took my bike over and leaned it against the 15 foot concrete wall that enclosed the residential area and went over to look at that branch. You could actually do pull-ups on it, it was so heavy. It was completely hidden from all but one small angle (on the wrong side of course) by the heavy leaves.

I know that town and my niece has a small business there and I also know that it would be useless to ask them to clear any overhanging tree branches and that it would take a lawsuit for an injury to get any action. So I just rode on.

And rode to the highest point of Altamont Pass. Although there is a freeway exit there it is only used by long haul truckers as a sleep area or a location at which truckers meet up to off-load the extra weight that they carried into the state because three miles ahead is a weighing station. The other side is a road that used to have farmer's fields on left but they installed wind farms there and now nothing can live there. Down the hill a bit is a rancher on the right ang the cows all huddle together because of the noise off of the windmills is extremely disturbing to them. They do not fatten properly there, so the farmer is just screwed by those windmills that cost more to build, install and maintain, than they ever make in energy. All of the insectivore bats in the area are killed by the supersonic noise that comes off of the end of those blades and the ground around them is littered with Raptors and other birds that cannot judge the speed nor height of a windmill that is higher off of the ground than the length of a football field.

Franky boy besides telling us all that I didn't hit my head also said that windmills don't bother cattle. That is because in his own mind he is a God of pure unassailable knowledge.