What's your dumbest bike mishap?
 

Classic that my nephew will never live down (because I won't let him).
I had a little two-seater Honda Prelude, first model year. Sat really low as it was stock.
Nephew wanted to go biking with me, so he bought a new bike, a Nishiki, which he loved.
I had a rack on my trunklid, and he asked me to take him and his bike to the bike shop for a free tuneup. He was buying lunch. Deal.
Get to his house and ask if he wants me to load it for him.
"Naw, I know what I'm doing!" and he proceeds to load it and strap it down as I sit in the car.
We get halfway there on the interstate, and hear a loud "POW!" outside.
"What was that?" he asked.
"I dunno."
We get to the shop, he gets out to unload his bike.
"Awwwwwwwww, man!"
And I look at the carnage. He'd loaded it with the front wheel hanging right in front of the muffler exhaust, and the heat had melted both tire and tube.
"I thought you knew what you were doing?"
"Shut up."

Overlapping wheels with another rider is probably something you'll learn not to do twice.

PSA: Always cross RxR tracks at a perpendicular angle.

Buying a Schwinn 754 BITD.

Probably one of the most common braindead moves: forgetting I was clipped in and coming to a stop without thinking to unclip or try to balance....

What was wrong with the 754?

It wasn't 531?

It was a piece of junk. Internal seat post clamp wasn’t strong enough for my 185 lb. body. Wheels sucked. Bearings fell out of the cluster when I was riding home uphill from the train station in Pittsburgh.

Bummer. I always thought they looked cool. I'll scratch that one off my list.

Buying my first bike. It has cost me thousands since.

Not practicing with clipless pedals before using them. First stop sign I fell over.

In SE Asia, people just ignore road rules, and do whatever they want. If you want to turn left, and wait until the traffic lights turn yellow then red, people just continue crossing the intersection, making it impossible to turn left. I found that I can accelerate quicker than most cars and motorbikes for the first little bit when a the traffic lights turn green. So I decided to turn left real quick, before the traffic coming the other direction moved very much. One day, someone on a motor bike coming the opposite direction, also decided to take off quickly. He saw me, and slowed down. But I learnt it was a bad idea.

Sometimes you just have to go to the next street. It is impossible to turn left in some places.

We all make mistakes, but the smart people learn from them.

You have to adapt your riding style in a place like this. You cannot ride like in a place where people obey the road rules. But that was one failed attempt at adapting.

My worst was years ago, after I had just moved to KY. Went to a local mtb trail, with which I was not familiar. Rode around for a while on the trails, then decided to pack up and head back to the house. That's when I got stupid. Exited on what appeared to be a path off of the trail. It was a deer path, that went to a slope with tall, slick, grass on it. Front wheel slid, I went down. When I looked around, my head (with helmet) was only a couple feet from a large rock. The bike at the time had a quill stem, and bars were pointing the same way as the top tube. I was fairly shaken up, even though I hadn't hit the rock. I recited (to myself), my phone number, address, birth date, just to be sure I wasn't concussed. STUPID mistake and went against all I've known forever!

Riding with a camelback and the mouthpiece came off on a downgrade. Water spraying everywhere at 30mph that broke my concentration just long enough to send me tumbling. Both me and the bike sustained some bumps and bruises but luckily nothing serious. I switched back to water bottles after that.

Probably leaning my first carbon bike on a rock wall. It slipped and chipped the top tube.

In the 80’s, I removed the front wheel from my 1983 Trek 760 and leaned the wheel on my rear bumper. I then lifted my bike and mounted it on my Thule roof rack. I got in the car and backed up..........and ran over my front wheel. It gave me a reason to upgrade the wheels. I got a set of Campy small flange hubs with Mavic rims to replace the Suntour Superbe Pro hub wheel set that came with the bike.

Banging in a loose bar-end plug while riding.

Don't do it!

Not putting the chain on the big ring when taking off a pedal.

Did you know it's possible to pierce your fingernails and then bleed through them?

Consider yourself lucky. I leaned/balanced my (first and only) carbon bike on a rock structure for a photo, and a big wind gust blew it over making the seat stay hit a rock that was down below, mildly splintering the carbon stay. $350 for a full LBS strip of the components, shipping the frame to a pro carbon repair shop, and the LBS re-mounting all components. I still take risky pics of my bikes, just less risky.

Here's the $350 picture (just seconds before the fall)....
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e926313f44.jpg

In 2009 a coworker was leaving for a bike trip in Europe and, planning ahead, decided to bring both his road bikes with him on the plane. That way if he was having trouble with one bike he had the other as a back up. His LBS had a travel hardcase big enough for two bikes so he loaded them both bikes on the roof rack of his car to take them to the shop two days before his flight. He was so excited for his trip, he forgot that his bikes were still on the roof rack when he tried to pull into the underground parking garage at our office.

Been there. Done that. Went all katywampus.

never ride behind someone that decides to hit their brakes at 28mph for no reason :notamused:

Oh man, that is definitely a bummer, on a separate note I had the same exact 2013 blue Madone 2.3!

Running into the back of parked cars. Not once, but twice. Many years ago when I was a kid. Both times on a Schwinn with the ultra-strong bladed forks and ultra-stiff welded frames, no damage to the bike. First time, front wheel stopped and bike pivoted up, and I held on until it came back down. (I had been moving pretty slowly.) No damage to me. Second time, bloodied my nose & mouth on the back of the car. I guess I'm a slow learner.

Lately, not an accident, but a stupid destruction of a rim. Ignored awful sounds coming from the brakes. The internal steel frame of the brake block had cut through the pad and scored a deep gouge in the aluminum rim. I don't think it's safe to use now.

I am about to head out for a ride. I don't have time to tell the story now. It was a recent mistake. DUMB. Maybe I'll have a chance later.