This is a little off topic but leads to the question have you ever had a training ride/run that came upon a crime scene? I’ve had two.
The last one was last Thursday, I was riding my bike up Topanga Canyon from the beach. One helicopter passes me by, then another, then a third. Since I’ve never lead a big race, I guess I didn’t know how loud those helicopters were.
Then I start passing Sheriffs vehicles, then search and rescue, then I realize every telephone pole has a “missing persons” flyer. I stop and realize I’m at ground zero for where producer Christian Irwin had disappeared. At that time, the theory was that he had been attacked by Nigerian Internet Scam artists. This was day four and the search was at a peak as they correctly assumed if he wasn’t found in the next day he would not live.
I rode home, wrote about the story, went back, took photos, and then blogged it:
The good news, as you may have heard, was that he was found last night. Alive but unfortunately in a severe mental state. The night he thought he was being attacked by “Nigerians with dogs” was just the sound of a party down the street leading to dogs barking. He was so scared however he ran off into Topanga Canyon and eluded being found for 5 days.
The other crime scene I had before that was that I had a regular run in Brentwood that went by Nicole Simpson’s house right around the time of the murder. That was always a little creepy.
Several years ago, our nightly ride was turned back around my military MP’s, as they said the area of the range was a crime scene. Later, much to my suprise, I found that they had found a body…and a co-worker of mine was the killer. She had poisoned her husband, and you would have never guessed her capable of this.
not an actual crime, but kind of a simulated one:
at the end of philly’s west river drive’s sat-sun no-car hours, there’s usually 1-2 police cars that lead the car traffic back onto the road. once i was riding there, and there must have been a half-dozen cop cars, all going around 15 mph. They seem to have decided that the cars would go in behind this one guy biking… so that guy was riding along, with all these cops behind him. it was like some sort of reenactment of OJ in the white blazer.
funny to see. the guy seemed kind of creeped out by it…
Van Cortlandt Park Golf Course is the oldest public course in the U.S. Located in the Bronx, holes 14 - 18 are away from the rest of the course.
When I was in college (1990) a gentleman kills himself on the 14th fairway. Suicide due to broken marriage real sad stuff. Well, unbeknownst to myself and my three buddies, we arrive to play our scheduled round just to be told that the ENTIRE COURSE was closed due to the crime scene on 14.
Needless to say, two of my friends (Bronx natives) make the case that we should be able to play 1 - 14 and than we’ll come off the course. The Parks Department relents and lets us go out. We get to 13 and the police are gone from the 14th hole cut through (allowing access to the course).
I parred the hole but we decided the crime scene remnants were out of bounds and we could get a free drop if we landed inside the yellow tape. We all managed to avoid that ‘unusual’ obstacle.
just got back from a great mtn bike ride out here in Hawaii at a BIG HILL called “Peacock Flats”, awesome ride, but on the subject riding this same ride a year ago we hit a “few” police.
The ride starts out by turning onto this access road from a main road. Well even the main road is pretty tiny and it’s way out in the middle of nowhere. You lift your bike through three gates in the first 200m or so and then continue up the road, climb a big hill, then drop on to miles of jeep road and singletrack. I guess you can get up there in a car if you have a certain type of hunting license or something like that. Anyways, I’ve never really known the legality of riding up there so we’re finishing up our ride, maybe 4 of us come flying down the hill, and as we approach the long straightaway before hitting gates to the main road we start catching glimpses of cop cars. We keep riding and soon we realize that it isn’t just a couple of cars, it’s like 10 cars maybe 15 or so motorcycle cops and more on the way. Stupidly we started wondering if they were there as we might have been trespassing, like they’d really send this many cops to stop a bunch of mtbrs. Turned out that a guy they had been chasing drove by in his 4wd, noticed that for some reason the gates were unlocked and booked it up the hill. There is only one way in and one way out, well unless he hikes the crazy singletrack down, and they were all in regular cars so they figured they’d just wait him out.
Okay, not that exciting but we were a little freaked for a bit.