Where I grew up, we had one policeman (on a bicycle) to cover about 25 square miles, so about 11 o'clock one evening I figured I wasn't going to get caught if I gave a half-built racing m'cycle I had been working on a quick road test. Not far from where I lived was a near-straight stretch about a mile long, fields on both sides. I got to the beginning of it and wound the bike up. It flew.
No-one, but no-one ever parked on country roads barely the width of two cars back then, especially at night. So I wasn't bothered when quite a way ahead I saw someone's tail-lights. But then I saw his brake lights and a second later realized that instead of pulling into the driveway of the only house on this whole piece of road, he was actually parking.
Now "half-built" in this case meant no brakes and a two-stroke engine has almost no engine braking, so shutting the throttle down didn't do a whole lot of good. I would slow some, but I was still going to pass him at high speed. No problem. I figured that if he was unlucky enough to be crossing the road, I could avoid him... but then another car came the other way.
I couldn't believe that probably the only two cars for miles around were going to pass each other at about the same time as I got there, leaving me a maybe 3 feet to get through... and that only so long as the parked guy didn't open a door. Near vertical banks on both sides of the road meant no run-off and of course I had no lights, so they weren't going to see me coming. And although the moonlight was fine for what I had set out to do, it was useless for precision riding. I just pointed myself between their lights and I swear I actually closed my eyes as I flashed between the two of them.
Got away with it too. A little skin off one knee and a very elevated heart rate for a while was the total damage
