LarDasse74

Oh! Another incident from my past, too:

Leaving the shop at 9:00 one night, excited, while my co-worker locked up I rode into the parking lot and tried to do a celabratory wheelie... I don't know if there is a formula for the perfect wheelie that results in the right amount of pull-up on the bars + torque in the pedals + weightshift over the rear wheel... all I know is I waaaaa-a-aaay overdid it, my bike flipped over backwards, tore my seat off its rails, and cracked the top of the extended seattube off the frame. I was able to bend the saddle back into shape and saw off an inch of the seattube and start anew, but my pride was permanently damaged.

rolliepollie

Ride through the cattle farm in summer heat. I couldn't breathe

thryn

I probably did stupider things as a kid when I was more durable, but cutting through a construction zone at 4 a.m. with limited light (I *thought* it was lighting my path well enough) was not my finest moment. Hitting train tracks that have had their leveling plates removed in the dark is a good way to find yourself no longer on your bike. The bruise collection was exceptionally interesting!

ragtoplvr

i came to a rural intersection that was blocked by a train on a siding. I waited a few minutes decided the train was not moving anytime soon. It was over 90 and temp climbing fast, I needed to be getting home. Crawling under the RR car with the bike I hear the slack in the couplers being taken up. Train just started to move as the bike and I got out from under. Trains accelerate slowly, but this was still kind of dumb, what if a shoelace had hung up or something.

Rod

nashvillwill

Holy Smokes! You rode DOWN Marin! I've got discs and I won't go down the mother effer.

toytech

Sideways through the circle, airborne on the intersections. I finally scrubbed enough speed somehow to crash without injury on someones front landscaping I would not attempt Marin up or down now.

lungimsam

I tried riding under a downed tree that was laying across the road.
It looked high enough for me to ride under.
I layed flat along the TT with my head down, chin in front of the tops, and my neck just about on the tops.

My friend behind me exclaimed how close it was when I went under. I made it but should never have taken that chance. I hate to think what would have happened to my head and neck if I would have hit the tree while moving forward on the bike. Talk about a ride ender.

Next time I'll hop off the bike and just walk around or under it. Not worth the risk.

Cog_wild

was racing around campus at night unlit and had a head on collision with a mt bike as I was goin around a corner of a building; so much for my 83 Scwhinn Super Le Tour. Bent the top tube, headset, and of course fork and tacoed the front wheel. Luckily for us we hit wheel to wheel and flew past each other on impact.

Myosmith

Going down a long downhill at 35+ mph on a touring bike and didn't see the intermittent rumble strips that had been cut across the white line on an outside curve. Took the first section of rumble strips at speed in a curve, bike ghost shifted, I dang near ruined a good chamois. I had been on this winding road for 25 miles and the only rumble strips were on the outside of this one tight turn and there were only three sections of them perhaps 20 feet in length each with the rumble strip being about 18 inches wide and taking up the white line and a good portion of the shoulder. Fairly steep ditch into the woods, would have been a helluva crash if I'd lost it.

Nermal

Okay, it's a car stupid thing, not a bike stupid thing but I feel a need to pass this along.

Last winter, I passed a snow plow while it was in operation. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT pass a moving snow plow. Ever.

agent pombero

Were you in traffic or a beautiful setting?

Bikepacker67

Neither.
He was in luv.

lostforawhile

I remember as a kid racing a bmx type bike down the street in Northeast Ohio, and hitting something, I dont remember what, but I flipped over the handlebars abd landed in one of the open sewer ditches that were there at the time. I had to slop my way back home covered in green slimy crap and straight up to the shower

skidder

(This was back in the early 1970s on a Schwinn Varsity and Continental). Not far from my house was a hilly area at the base of the San Bernardino Mtns (Southern Calif) was a steep street in a residential area that ended in a 'T' intersection. A friend and I laid out a 176 yd stretch (1/10 of a mile) and we'd time ourselves with his dad's stopwatch to see how fast we could go. There wasn't much street before the 'T', so you had to slam on your brakes and skid to a stop really quick. One day while we were doing this a police officer pulled up (oh crap!). He got out, asked us what we were doing, told us how dangerous it looked. We explained what we had done (laying out the timing stretch, enough braking area, etc.). He stood there looking at it, then pulled out this new-fangled gadget he was using (a radar gun) and wanted to know if we'd help him test it!. He blocked the bottom of the street for about 1/2 hour and we got some great, all-out runs down that hill! Yeah, it was dangerous, but that cop really made our day!

xenologer

rode on the shoulder (like all the other bikes ) downtown , so a car could cut into a parallel parking spot right in front of me and nearly take me out. i take the lane on that road now.

linus

Yep. Stupidist thing ever.

gitarzan

When I was a kid I decided to see how far I could ride with my eyes shut. Answer: two houses, until a parked car got in my way. I had not even planned for that. It was pretty nice unitl that sudden jolt.

treadtread

This was a long time ago. Was out cycling in Duluth, Minnesota - decided to follow a frozen brook that led down to the lake. The brook was frozen, snowed over and led downwards, but the cross country folks used it a lot so the snow was packed. Well - it wasn't packed in all places - my wheel sank into one soft spot and I went sailing. Didn't break anything luckily, the soft snow also saved me there.

TwoFourOne

I was riding home at nighttime on the sidewalk of a fast six lane road. There were two people on the sidewalk ahead of me, and they were carrying big grocery bags, so I decided to go in the road to pass them. I went when there were no cars, passed them, and tried to get back onto the sidewalk. I thought there was a dip in the curb where I could get back on, so I did...but apparently there was no dip. I ran straight into the curb at about 20mph and went down with my bike The couple I just passed didn't even ask if I was okay (they were 50 feet behind me), but then again, I got up pretty quickly.

Bike was mostly fine, but here's what I got: https://i.imgur.com/DSzKQ.png

seeker_moc

When I was 13, the area in Michigan where I lived had large drainage ditches in the front yard of pretty much every hose. Their sides were steep and some of them were pretty deep. I would ride my bike in a continuous "S" pattern, intersecting and riding through the ditch every time I turned. One of them had the water main for the house running through the bottom of it. I hit, and landed with my right arm right on the pipe. It broke my arm clean through both bones in two places. The middle section of bone turned sideways, making my arm look like a "Z". Funny thing was it didn't hurt at all, must have been shock, but I spent the next month in a full cast from shoulder to wrist.

Doohickie

The first time I went down Hidden Road hill on my bike, I had my camera out, taking pics of the other riders I was with. At night. It's one of the steeper hills in town and there was a little dip that took me off the saddle and into the handlebars. Next stop was my shoulder on the pavement (or so I thought). I saved it somehow and ended up very scared but uninjured.

Billy Bones

I once took a spin to the 7/11 for coffee and left with a nurse. D**n bad move. Still payin' off the emotional balance of that stupid move. That said, she was [and still is] so cute...like a leopard.

stevebiker

Riding on a bike path at night without a light. Four guys on bikes, also riding without lights, and all dressed in dark clothing and riding abeast -- fully occupying the bike path -- came toward me from the other direction and I slammed on the front brake only (did you say stupid?).

Did a flip over the handlebars and luckily my knee hit sideways on the pavement, resulting only in a bad abrasion. Which abrasion took a year to heal completely and disappear, giving you an idea of what would have happened if I'd fallen at a slightly different angle.

mprelaw

Am I the only guy who ever stuck his fingers in the front spokes, reaching for a DT shifter when my mind was somewhere else?

apollored

There are two sets of tunnels on the main road up to Wilmslow right next to Manchester Airport and the roofs of them form part of the runways and aircraft taxi over them before turning to line up for take off.

There is an area thats for cars only and tunnels for cyclists and pedestrians either side of them.

Well the first time I rode up there I didnt see these tunnels and just carried on into the tunnel on the road only bit.

Well I'll you it may not seem much but its one of the few times I've been truly scared on a bike. The traffic used to go through there at 40 mph (speed limit) and probably much faster than that.

There is nowhere to go for a bike in there and the cars were skimming past me at speed and besides that there was the sound of planes taxying above making a right racket. I soon got the idea that bikes were definitely not meant to be in there and lord help me should a cop come along.

It wasnt till I got out the other side that I noticed the tunnels and thought oh you plonker should have seen them before.

Now I definitely used the right hand tunnel esp when hearing of the smashes that have happened in there.