Killer Kangaroo's

It was one of those lovely mornings.

A group of us had met for our standard long Sunday ride, and while the air was crisp as we started it was a classic spring time day where you knew it was going to warm up as we rolled along. It was a good group as well. A mix of abilities but all got types so the banter and piss taking got started early.

As we headed out of town, the miles were clicking by easily. As usual we rode two abrest and swapped turns at the front every couple of K's. I was riding behind my friend "Ripper", who was a good little rider, but only had sight in his right eye so you had to be careful when you were on his left. Ripper and I knew each other well as we had worked together as cleaners in a factory when we were at Uni, and so had had the sort of conversations that you can only have when you are desperately trying to avoid doing any real work.

We were riding through a bushed area with trees on each side of the road. We started to head down a bit of a gully so we were doing maybe 50kph when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move on my left. In a split second I registered that it was a Kangaroo and it was heading straight for the bunch!!!! I could see that at its current velocity it was going to contact the bunch somewhere near me, but all I could do was brace for impact. As it got within one hop of us, it seemed to realise that it was in trouble and tried with one almighty hop to go over the top. Thats right, it tried to jump over us. I realised that while I had a hole in my arse that that plan was not going to work, and watched in awe as the creature flew through the air and laid a perfect shirtfront on Ripper. It hit him with full force on the left hand shoulder. Due to his vision problem, Ripper would genuinely claim later that "I didnt see him coming".

Rip hit the ground like a bag of spuds. His lovely Eddy Merckx cartwheeling down the road while everyone did the best they could to avoid the carnage. As we all picked ourselves up and checked on Ripper we were confronted with one of the most sureal sights I have ever seen. Ripper was lying on the ground with a broken collar bone and beside him almost snuggled up was a unconcious kangaroo. We formed a circle of sweaty lycra around the two. Rip sat up and while clearly confussed about what had happened and in pain from the collar bone, he was OK. Slowely, the kangaroo came around. Lying on its side it tilted its head up and surveyed the scene. It had a look on its face which suggested it was thinking "what the f___ is going on here?" It sat there like that for about 10 seconds before one of the guys reached out and touched it gently on the nose. At that point it obviously thought - I am out of here, and it took off at a million miles an hour between two blokes legs and back into the bush.

We got Rip up and managed to push him back home. We rode in silence pretty much all the way back. As we reached town, the bloke beside me looked around and said with a solemn look on his face, "Mate, that was bullshit".

I had to agree with him.