Polaris OBark

Her bike had that. I pulled it out, too.

Ttom

I had to repair a flat tire, took the tire off the rim installed a new tube and payed no attention to the fact that my directional tire was on backwards went on my merry way. The next day as I was riding and it started to rain I had a right hand turn coming up no traffic so I slowly made that turn with water hiding the fact that there was a man hole cover and my front tire was turning, I instantly lost gip in the front tire and instantly went down landing hard on my right shoulder. That is the day I realized that my head is on a swivel so when all of my body weight landed on my shoulder my head kept going with force, bam.
I was in la la land for a few minutes, my shoulder hurt but my helmet saved my bacon. The bike was OK, I on the other hand messed up my rotator cuff, took 2 years before it totally healed. In this case there was to much force to stop my head even if I knew what was about to happen my body stopped very suddenly shoulder first and my head followed. I was not going fast it was raining, I will never ride on the streets without my helmet lesson learned. I will always double check the direction of the tread when mounting tires. It all happened in an instant no helmet and I would have cracked my skull for sure it was a dumb mistake. Might have happened anyway running over a man hole cover that I could not see in the rain but with a directional rain tire on backwards it was guaranteed. Boy my shoulder hurt bad for a long time.

jppe

Amen on the helmet. When you go down like that there's no way to hold your head so it won't smack the ground. I tried to keep my head from hitting the pavement once in a similar crash and quickly learned it just wasn't happening. Our heads are too heavy to stop them when they're moving at speed. It might even make matters worse on pulling a neck muscle. I know I've cracked at least two helmets and maybe three.....

BTinNYC 

Ordered a VO French thread bottom bracket. Got it and went right to work. It was cross threading and cross threading and NOT going in correctly. I know; A) Don't force things, and B) Take a day and get back at the problem with a fresh, not frustrated, mind.

Back in the garage the next day I restart the process by double checking the L and R markings on the BB and.... sonuva***** illiterate moron I am, it was a Brit BB and said so very clearly.

Didn't foul up the Pug threads, just wasted money and time. Oops. Dumass. Surely I've done dumber bike things, but luckily I can't remember them.

feejer

Well I think I just did mine the other day. I was replacing the shifters, and putting on all new cable and housing. Got the whole thing done, then go to start adjusting the front derailleur, and realize there is no barrel adjuster on my new shifters. So I get an inline barrel adjuster spliced in and everything back together. Then I realize I forgot to use the Shiftmate which is necessary on the FD. D'oh! Pull it all again and splice in the Shiftmate. Sure felt stupid after all that!

freeranger

Wow! Only 55 posts so far! Would have had over 100 if this was a chain lube thread! We older riders must make very few mistakes, or don't want to admit to them (most likely the latter!).
BTW--I contributed already.

rsbob 

How many ways can one screw up a rear mech? About twenty years ago I knew, or didn’t know, each and every one of them, until Al Gore invented the internet and the Google and the YouTube. Amen

leob1

Did that to my wife's bike. It was a shimano chain so I thought it was the usual noise from those. It wasn't.
Also tried to mix 9 speed and ten speed parts on her bike.
In my early teens, i wanted to make my 'stingray' cooler. I already had the big sissy bar, glittery banana seat and ape hangers. So of course I had to have a smaller front wheel for a cool chopper look. I took the 16 inch wheel off my sisters bike and used it to replace the 20 wheel on mine. Look good, time for a test ride. Jump on the bike, hit the street. do a nice wheelie, and realize I didn't tighten the wheel nuts as I watched the front wheel bounce down the street without me. That was the first time I was laying unconscious in the street.

cyclist2000

I found a old 93 Stumpjumper, it had a few problems but I decided to update from 7 speeds to 10 speeds since the shifters were shot with with the repairs. Put it all together with a few new parts and a bunch of parts laying around. I got everything together was riding it around and two things came up the shifters needed to be fine tuned and the bike wouldn't stop. I didn't check the brake pads, they were probably as old as the frame. I spent an afternoon trying to tune the shifting but up shifting it seemed to always skip a gear. I finally realized that I was using a 9-speed derailleur with 10 speed shifters. I had used these combination with my touring bike with drop bar and it works fine, but I forgot it wouldn't work with mountain bike shifters. This happened just a couple of months ago.

Miles2go

Installed my last set of Conti 5000TL tires, which are very, very hard to mount to my wheels, and right after finishing, noticed the rear was on backwards. I pointed that out to my riding buddies, saying it was costing me at least 5 watts. In practice, I'm not sure it makes any difference at all. I ran it that way until it was done.

Fredo76

I'm not sure it was the worst, but it was definitely the most embarrassing. I cleaned my chain with gas on a Saturday, and let it dry, but forgot to oil it. As soon as I started out on the race Sunday, I knew what had happened, but there was nothing to do but keep going.

Lap after lap I rode around, squeaking and squealing...

Reeet-reeet-reeet-reeet-reeet-reeet....