Nachoman

What was it?
This weekend I pedaled 10 miles up a 17 mile canyon road. When it started to rain I reached into my jersey pocket and guess what I forgot to pack? Okay next question. Guess who was freezing and wet for the next 10 miles back down the mountain? Bush league.

Nermal

Funny you should ask. I just got done falling off my bike. In the house. Well, I was checking clearances on a new seat bag, threw my right leg (almost) over the seat, hung up on the bag, and over I went. Did I mention this happened in the house, with three cats looking on, like "Gosh, what won't Rog think of next?"

Hang on. I'm starting my own thread.

bikedaddy

Back in August after my first couple of weeks of commuting I decided to ride my bike 10 miles to my soccer game. While on a bike path one of my front brakes start to slightly rub against my rim. I started to play with the brakes just messing around and to see if I could figure out was going on. Suddenly for some reason my hand decided it would be a great idea to slam on the front brakes. Ofcourse I go flying over the handlesbars and land on my wrist and side. No was around to witness but I still felt like a huge witness. I then rode the rest of the way to my game and played. I was very out of shape and playing with a severly sprained wrist (took about six weeks to heal) and nice road rash on my arm. I then rode the ten miles home with my wrist in agony, worn out, and into a very stormy headwind.

The whole experience was rather painful. I'm fine with a twenty mile ride but throw a soccer game and injury accident in there and it is hell. The worse ofcouse was explaining my accident to the coworkers all week.

Allen

I knocked the front fender on my Giant out of alignment. It was rubbing the front tire, and while riding I had the bright idea of leaning over the handlebars and push it back in line.
Well, the fender did not rub any longer, being that it was in my hand and I was laying on the ground about six feet away from my bike. Did this in front of a football field while the kids were at practice....and they laughed, and laughed.

--A

iamlucky13

How about trying to read mail while riding no hands (ie - not watching where I'm going)?

I looked down in time to see a curb coming up fast, grabbed the bars, jammed the brakes, and came to a stop with the wheel against the curb, endoing amazingly slowly and landing soft as a feather in bark dust.

The next night I tried to jump the ramped transition between street and sidewalk in poor lighting. I overshot the sidewalk, jammed my front wheel against another curb, and endoed hard. This was about 50 feet away from the spot I endoed the night before. This one was not soft. Look before you leap.

pyze-guy

First time I decided to coast on my fixed gear while riding no hands. Was the first and only time I 'tried' that. I looked like a drunk on a mechanical bull trying not to fall off.

MichaelW

A bar-bag mishap.

I hung my bar bag on the Klick-Fix mount but didnt click it in place. I take off at a slow pace. After 1/4 mile I hit a bump and the bag jumps off the mount onto my fender. I sit there like a jerk appreciating how nicely the bar bag is balancing.
Hit another bump and the bag jogs forward onto the tyre.
"Oh look, the bag is spinning round with the wheel."
"Oh dear, the bag is lodged under the front wheel"
"Oh s**t", Im going to fall.
I take a spill sideways and scratch up my leather gloves badly but otherwise unharmed. The bag took a scraping but was fine.


Why didnt I engage brain and ride the bike??

DataJunkie

Last summer I was just starting my commute home. I heard a click and looked down to see what it was. 2 secs later I looked up and was headed towards a curb at 15 miles an hr. Slammed on my brakes, hit the curb at an odd angle, and flew off my bike to the left. The scars are still working on fading. Poor left leg. My left wrist still hurts from time to time.

Psydotek

So far just falling over when i had just installed my clipless pedals. At a dead stop. 3 times.

rule

The first day of going clipless, I wheeled out of the garage, made a short sprint down the street and back, pulled up into my driveway, and promptly did the ultra-low speed teeter over into an ivy bed. I got up, checked to see if anybody had noticed, then headed out as red as a beet on my neighborhood loop. About 30 minutes later and on my third time around the loop, I noticed my shadow on the road in front of me and something looking really funky about my helmet. I reached up to feel around and found three vines of ivy sticking out of the vents, one of which was about a foot long. I looked like a cross between a soldier trying to camoflage his helmet and a complete ****. Naturally I felt more like the latter.



And p.s....I've just about pissed myself laughing at some of these. Thanks to all you humble souls for sharing your human-ness.

ax0n

Was riding on the sidewalk in an unfamiliar area because of traffic, going to a different bus stop than usual just to spice it up. Well, what I thought was a sidwalk-to-road ramp, ended up being a 2-foot drop of a storm drain. Everywhere else in this god forsaken town the ramps are just straight through. This one had a huge drain there and the ramp was off to the side about 10 feet.

I landed on my front wheel, with my rear wheel already 2 feet above the front. I stand up on the pedals, grab the handlebar with all my might, and roll halfway through the intersection (right in front of a stopped car at a stop sign) on only my front wheel. I landed off-kilter, my duffel bag fell off in the middle of the road, and I almost lost the bike on a side-to-side wobble after landing the rear wheel. Then I had to skid to a stop, dismount, sheepishly pick up my duffel bag, and carry on.

Only God knows what that was going through that driver's head, but it was probably something like "what a dumbass!"

N_C

Couldnt you have put your bike on a trainer, or do you not have one?

Nermal

Don't have one, and probably would have found a way to fall off the trainer, too.

jcm

Two instances - both after newly going to clipless, and both times in front of a crowd:
1) With my cycling club at a local public attraction ( I was simply a free extra ), we were getting ready to head out and I had just said, "Ok, let's hit it!" and promptly fell over. There was a bus load of Japanese tourists, some of whom have the event recorded on disc...

2) At a red light, with no cars present, I began weaving and circling the metal detector area, trying to get the green. By the time the light changed there were several cars there and I had just got straightened out when I simply plopped. They got the green light. I got the red face.

cyccommute 

Where to start?

Came off a water check, caught great air and watched my right hand floating above the bar. I remember thinking, "This is wrong. And it's gonna hurt." It did.

Flying down the road from work at 35+mph with a great tailwind. I angled for the curb cut but I knew I was going to miss it. Slammed on the brakes but I hit the 4" curb, collapsed my fork (an early Manitou), flew off the bars, smacked the ground on my head over my left eye, pivoted on that spot and flopped onto the ground like a dead fish. Ow.

Mistimed a pedal stroke on a narrow part of the Monarch Crest Trail and hit a big rock with the pedal. Knocked me off the bike and I hit the handlebar with my chest on the way over, somersaulted down the hill and caught the bike by the top tube before it could fly about 300 feet down a steep slope. Ended up with a big painful bruise that eventually was black, blue and yellow from my shoulder to my hip. Ow.

Rode mountain bikes 15 miles up the Roaring Fork river on an off-road touring trip with my daughter and, as the clouds were starting to boil in for a really bad thunderstorm, discovered that I had forgot the part of the tent that holds the poles together. Luckily it was a fast downhill. Oh, wait that wasn't a rookie mistake. That was just being dumb.

Heading to school, I was booking down Colfax Ave in Lakewood and thought the guy making the left turn saw me. Was I suprised when he suddenly appeared in front of me but not nearly as suprised as he was when I slide across his hood after hitting the right quarter panel. We both yelled "Oh, sh*t!" at the same time. I came to rest on the other side of the car with a knee that looked like it had been through a meat grinder (It didn't hurt, I severed a nerve and still don't have feeling in that knee) as I watched my handlebar bag slide to a stop under a car at the intersection. Got to spend 4 days in the hospital for that one.

And probably the dumbest, and the one that hurt the worst, was the time I took a sick day, went fishing on the Platte River, slipped on a rock, caved in 2 ribs and then had to drive home on a twisting mountain road that pressed into those ribs every time I went around a corner. Ow! Ow! Ow! Oh, wait! Wrong sport

chephy

As a kid I was once playing bicycle tag with a bunch of friends on a big concrete patch that had one lonely lamp post in the middle of it. So as I was speeding away trying to avoid being caught and watching over my shoulder to see if the pursuer was closing the gap I ran right into the post.

Kids are cruel. They didn't even ask me if I was ok, they just laughed their miserable asses off.

flair1111

I drove 25 miles to a nice trail head back in the mountains. Couldnt wait to get started as I had been slow getting the bike rack locked on the hitch ,bike loaded, food, drinks.....

I get there and get out of the Jeep to unlock my bike from the rack and....I didint bring the keys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fenester

I just started using clips again (after a good 10 year hiatus). Right across from work in the morning I did the slo-mo flop. Plenty of time to frantically wiggle my leg and watch the ground on the way down. The only person near was nice enough to act like he didn't see it. Thanks buddy!

c0urt

i washed out this morning doing a u-turn in a wet parking lot. i just cant keep my brifters looking nice

fillthecup

No crash involved, but I remember after I'd been biking for a year or so, my bike mechanic asked me how often I lubed the chain as he was tuning it up. I just stared at him, it had never occurred to me before that I should give my bike a looking over now and then, but the moment he asked I realized that I had always assumed my bike took care of itself somehow. I was so embarrassed, because lubing and checking one's tire pressure seem like such an obvious thing. But back then they weren't. I signed up for a free basic bike maintenance clinic, and have been trying since then to have a clue.

Still, everytime I think I know a thing or two about bikes I find a new way to embarrass myself.

bike2math

My light caught a tiny stick in the MUP one dark and stormy night. I had been riding gingerly because of the layer of wet, slightly composted, leaves on the path. But in my genius move of the year I jammed on the front break while also trying to swerve around this tiny little stick. BAM! Just like emeril. I just lay in the pile of leaves and dirt with about an inch of water laughing and laughing. My winter getup is permanantly stained orange (from the leaves I guess) to remind me of that bone head move.

What made it really embarrasing is that it had been 5 days since a previous crash on wet leaves had tweaked my brand new front wheel (brand new because of an accident 10 days before that).

My wife, being the sweet heart that she is, made me a sign after the third one, which hangs above my bike in the garage, "This family has gone 15 days without a commute stoppage accident" She loves me!

caloso

A true rookie move:

I was six and visiting my cousins in Wisconsin. I was riding my cousin Patricia's bike, a cool Schwinn 5-speed. I was following my other cousin Dennis down the long hill in front of their house and into the driveway. I hit the brake by pedalling backwards and instead of catching the pedal just kept rotating backwards as the rear bumper of my Aunt Dorothy's gigantic Buick station wagon loomed. Ack! Why won't this thing stop?

To avoid the Buick, I had to crash land in the ditch along the driveway. After I picked out the rocks from my knees and hands, Dennis showed me that the Schwinn had hand brakes, not coaster brakes. Ah. Thanks for telling me.

lymbzero

Sitting on my bike holding a railing, chatting on my cell phone.
When I went to start riding again, my wheel turned all the way to the left.
Before I could correct the problem, or get out of my clips,
I fell sideways and crashed onto the sidewalk.

Of course I was directly across the street from a big windowed resturant where everyone could see.

HOW EMBARASSING.

bmclaughlin807

Hmm.... I have a long and colorful biking history to pull from, so... let's pull a few incidents at random.

1: Let's start with a recent one. Every day on my commute I stop and lift my bike over a chain across a parking lot, so I can cut through and don't have to go all the way around the block like the cars do. Coming up to the chain one cool, wet morning, I squeezed the brake levers and got a sick feeling when I didn't even slow. I'd worked on the wheels the night before, and forgot to readjust the brakes. I had a 10" bruise just above my knee for a week and a half.

2: In high school I was bombing down a hill on the sidewalk, and there's a road that intersects at about 20 degrees instead of 90.. I bomb across and realize suddenly that the cutout on the curb is WAY off to one side.. no way to make it over at the speed I'm going, I slammed the brakes and nailed the curb, going over the handlebars and landing on the grass on the other side of the sidewalk.

3: The first night I bought my first new bike (My first paycheck from my first job!) I just couldn't wait, so I took it out for a spin in the dark, no lights. Riding down a dirt road in total blackness, I hit a rut where someone had gotten stuck and spun their wheels... The bike went right (along the rut) and I went left. Being pitch black, I couldn't see the ground to prepare for impact or roll with the landing, so I landed on my left arm and slid about 10 feet. Walked (limped) the bike home, and spent an hour digging gravel out of my arm. I still have a nice scar from that.

Ok... that's enough embarrasment for me. Maybe some more later.

cyccommute 

I drove from Denver to La Junta (3 hour drive) and forgot my shoes...and I was the ride leader