RoadRider4321

At the risk of embarrassing myself I'll start this thread off.

When I was maybe 11-12 years old I was working on my bike in the front yard of our house. I was making a few adjustments to something when a sudden thought occurred to me, "What would happen if I were to stick a screwdriver into the wheel while it was spinning?"

As the rear bike wheel was spinning fairly fast I stuck my screwdriver into the spokes. Yup, you can safely assume that I sheered off almost 1/3 of the spokes at the nipples! I don't know what I was thinking when I did this? I felt understandably VERY stupid!

Can anyone top this stupid stunt?

jefnvk

Riding on wet cobblestone with a glass beer bottle in your pocket.

Still got the scar from the gash in my thigh from that night.

RoadRider4321

OUCH! I feel you pain...

canklecat

Where to begin...

The time I tried to bunny hop a curb on my Sting Ray... with my little brother riding behind me. Hey, who knew another 50 lbs could make that much difference in getting airborne? Surprised I could still have children after that experience.

Deciding the night before the 1980 Rosarito-Ensenada ride "Hey, I'll bet substituting WD-40 for that heavy, sluggish grease in my wheel hubs will make me go faster!" Didn't occur to me how much those hubs would heat up on those fast downhills. I'm surprised the hubs didn't seize up and pitch me face first into the road where I'd be run over by a truck or 100 other cyclists.

Too many others. But those were the dumbest.

Sangetsu

When I was a kid, we had an ancient Schwinn with no chain. We couldn't pedal it,but we could push ourselves around on it. One day I found a hill nearby our neighborhood, and had the bright idea of coasting down the hill.

Old Schwinns used coaster brakes, and as this bike had no chain, you can get the idea. It's amazing how fast an old bike can roll down a steep hill, especially when it has no brakes, and how far a bike and it's rider can fly through the air when riding over a dropoff at high speed.

This stunt earned my my first broken bone, and spelt the end of the line for the old Schwinn, the fork was bent back, and we were never able to find the front wheel.

Nermal

I seem to recall unclipping my left foot and trying to put my right foot on the ground. Didn't work.


Another time, I had my right foot on the ground, but my left pedal was at the 1 o'clock position. I stomped it to bring it to somewhere around the 10 0'clock position. It kept on going, so I'm riding back to the trailhead with blood dripping from my left shin onto the ground. No big injury, but I doubt anybody really thought I was riding that way on purpose.

diphthong

we can only pick one!?

RoadRider4321

Feel free to add as many as you want! If you have more than one that stands out go for it. I'd like knowing that I wasn't the only person to do something stupid involving bikes.

BISCUT

Oh man...Grew in MA in the 5 college area (UMASS, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke) and had a pretty good fake ID. Around 19/20. Summer time my best friend and me worked landscape; money was good but work was rough. So what do 19/20 year old in college with some $$ do? Party of course.

Most nights we were liquored up and took our mtb's so we weren't driving a vehicle. About a 40 min ride by bike. There was a stretch of road that was 2 to 3 miles, straight and dark. Not hard to guess what comes next. One night a little too banged up on the sauce, and boom! Veered off the road and into a ditch. No pain that moment....next day i was sore all over. Luckily nothing broken.

I still remember how good it felt to ride home in the summer breeze late night with nothing really going on around you.

BobbyG

At 10 or 11 I played bike-chicken with my best friend on the cold, hard outfield grass of a local park in November. After one tangle and fall I hit and hurt my head on the semi-frozen ground. No helmets back then. My friend said to quit faking it, you didn't fall that hard. So I recreated the fall in slow motion intending to slowly, and gently place my head against the ground. However, when my Schwinn Stingray (banana seat, high-rise bars , rear slick) leaned over at enough of an angle I fell and re-hit my head.

Another time around the same year I took the same bike over a neighborhood jump ramp with some local boys. Some one suggested raising the angle of the ramp and I was the first to try it. Instead of landing on my back wheel as I had been doing all afternoon, I pitched forward and landed pointing almost straight down, my front wheel smacking the ground, me going forward between the high-riser bars and seeing the small "sissy-bar" of the banana seat hit the ground next to my head. I woke up a moment or two later, sore, but none the worse for the ordeal. I straightened my bars and after a few more jums, rode home.

But now, at 55 years of age, with 25 years of serious bike commuting behind me I realize the stupidest thing I did was how I interacted with traffic growing up. When I look back at how we rode our bikes in traffic on the north side of Chicago as kids in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I wonder how any of us didn't end up as smudges on the pavement. No mirrors, no helmets, no experience behind the wheel, just flying around blind corners, blowing stop signs and shooting through intersections, hopping off driveway lips into traffic, skitching on buses and trucks. There were no bike lanes and most cars back then had no passenger side mirrors. OMFG, I shouldn't have live through it.

shafter

I tried to take off a jacket while riding recently. I tipped right in front of an old dude trimming his bushes and ripped my pants.

Hiro11

Riding my mountain bike in my college dorm, promptly wiping out on some concrete stairs and breaking my wrist. My girlfriend had to take me to the hospital.

coominya

Bought a racer after years of pleasure on a road converted MTB. The low traction under breaking was the worst aspect safety-wise, but the inability to dart up onto footpaths and generally go offroad to avoid heavy traffic convinced me to go back to a more practical design for urban riding.

FBOATSB

I think the stupidest thing I did as a child was ride my two week old Murray Wildcat to the local swimming pool and not lock it to the bike rack. I was devastated.... It was also the last new bicycle that was bought for me that was not paid for by my own meager income.

Fast forward about 55 years, my bride thought the stupidest thing in the world I could possibly do was to overhaul an old Schwinn and start riding again after spine surgery and permanent nerve damage. She even had to help me drag that thing up out of the basement I was so weak. She, however, has come to respect my born again hobby as I have not killed myself yet.

philbob57

I was 11, growing up in Providence. Hilly. Not SF, but hilly. I decided the pretend to slalom my way down one of the local hills. Lost control, fell, slid on my eyebrow. I still carry the scar.

2 days ago (and a week ago, and a month ago), age 72, I was mounting a new tire. I forgot the basic step of making sure the tube isn't caught between the bead and the rim. I think it wasn't until the 4th tube that I remembered. (Stupid, but never urgent - I can always drive 5 miles RT to a shop that will install a tube (or tire) if you buy it from them.) I have finally relearned how to change a tube or tire.

It'll always be something....

SylvainG

That would be yesterday for me. I removed Thursday night the front rack that is held in place using the front brake's bosses. Forgot to put back the screws that hold the cantilevers in place Rode 5 minutes yesterday before I remembered it and I had used the front brake exclusively a few times since it was raining. My commute yesterday could have become a

KevinF

I was riding the bike trail one time and was enjoying the view of the curvy young lady just in front of me... We rolled up to a stop, I unclipped the right foot and fell over to the left. She did notice me! I was too embarrassed to ask for a date.

When I was a kid, a friend and I tried slalom'ing in and out of those orange barrels construction crews use to mark work zones. At one point I crashed right into one of the barrels. Construction crews weren't around; I was a mess, but we put the barrel back and rode on home.

RoadRider4321

I"ll add another really stupid event that came to mind last night.

One day I was riding my bike to go visit a friend. Suddenly I saw my neighborhood bully who started chasing me on his bike. I increased my speed to stay an effective distance ahead of him. It suddenly occurred to me that I was approaching a very busy two-lane road with a diverge towards the right. I hoped that the traffic wasn't too busy that day. WRONG! It was fairly busy as usual. As I quickly neared the busy road I managed to estimate a location to enter the roadway and continue onto the right diverge. I pulled onto the busy roadway, made the turn on the diverge barely missing 2 cars (or should I say them almost hitting me!). I'm talking within less than 5-10 feet of clearance!!! That scared the crap out of me and also caused one of the cars to do some sudden braking to avoid hitting me.

That little stunt I never did again!!!

stevoo

Surprised I have not yet seen a post that involves a car, a roof top bike rack with bike attatched and a garage.

RoadRider4321

I'm sure we'll eventually see at least one of those posted here. It's just a matter of time.

wipekitty

I'll add another to the youthful drunken bike riding adventures. One night, I - wait for it - crashed my bike. In addition to falling off the bike and getting some bruises, I managed to jam up the brakes so that neither wheel would spin at all. Not having the tools (or mental ability) to fix the bike, I ended up carrying this awful, heavy, low-end MTB two miles back to my house...in the rain.

When I was a kid, I used to clock speeds of 25-30 MPH on this short but steep hill near my parents' house. I'm not sure if that was dumb, but it probably wasn't the safest exercise since I didn't know how to pay attention to traffic and helmets for kids were just starting to become a thing.

DarKris

When I was a kid: rode my Full sus Walmart bike that I was overweight for and was too big to fit to a Gamestop that was 2 mi. from my house. Took me 1 1/2 hours to and from the store on that bike.

Before that I rode down a hill on a kid's BMX bike, lost control, and fell face first and chipped my two front teeth. :v

Now: Trying to manual (still overweight) on my cyclocross bike. Fell forward onto my front wheel + fork and tacoed my front wheel...... or at least I thought I did till I took it to my LBS where they found out my QR just shifted. Only needed a minor true....

P.S.: If I had my carbon fork instead of my Steel one, I'm 99% sure I would have snapped that in half....

Doug64

I'll post it, but it was my wife not me!

Nermal

^^ Un huh!

kingston 

When I was a teenager in the 80’s I lived in a little town in Iowa on the Mississippi river. One day we took a little 3 foot kicker ramp down to the municipal boat dock, strapped horse collar life-jacket on to the handlebars of my Schwinn Predator and started jumping it into the river. The current was pretty strong so one of us would stand a few yards down the dock and throw a rope to the guy who just jumped so we could pull him and the bike back to the dock and let the next guy jump. We were doing that for a while, and one of the guys let go of the bike when he landed, the life-jacket came off the bars, and the bike sunk to the bottom of the river. We tried diving for it a few times, but the current was too fast and the bike was too deep for us to find it. So we went home and tied a big magnet to a rope, took it back down to the river and started dragging for the bike. We could get the magnet to stick to the bike, but the magnet wasn’t strong enough to pull the bike off the bottom, so after sticking the magnet to the bike, I dove in and followed the line down to the bike, grabbed the bike, tugged the line, and one of my buddies pulled me back to the dock. Went back home, re-packed all the bearings, and that Predator was good as new. We did a lot of extremely stupid things with our bikes in those days, but that’s probably the best story.