A bird flew through my wheel.

[Wigsie]

well, it assumes 16 evenly spaced holes on the rim. Multiply the speed the bird would have had to go by n/16 where n is his actual number of spokes. It appears wigsie that you have, inadvertantly or not, hit upon the entire point of this thread - to boast about how few spokes he's got. I think my calculation proves that even with minimal spokes a bird couldn't possibly have flew through and lived, which renders the entire story complete bollocks anyhow, thus proving my analysis...

I know what your saying, mathematically it is possible, a Peregrin Falcon can fly at up to 80mph so it is feasable that a black bird/blue tit could have a speed burst of around 40... and couple that with Dells RSPB Spoke set up and it is plausable!

As Bonj says, it's going to depend on the nature of the wheel and how fast it's going, but I was once on a ride on which a blackbird flew through a front wheel.

The blackbird died. The bike and its rider were liberally spattered with its blood. The rider also came off, taking several following riders with him (this happened on a bend at the bottom of a fast descent).

Apart from the blood and a few scratches, the bike was unharmed.

This helps me no end Phil, so a blackbird will cause a cyclist to come off, which means the threshold for a rider to stay on needs to be smaller....

anyone hit a sparrow and stayed on?

 

[Wigsie]

Bonj: Going by your earlier Hypothesis this (post #55) would indicate the bird would only need to be travelling 22mph? which is entirely feasible, but still very lucky.

 

[Mr Pig]

That is remarkable indeed. My mate once ran over a bird in flight in his car as he was crawling through traffic. Two birds flew under the front of the car, only one came out. Looked out the back window and Tweety was pancaked on to the road.

I ran over a Jack Russel last year, it was pretty scuffed up but lived.