Rootman

Not me - I'd be too chicken to even try it - a friend of mine named Rob bet that he could ride his bike down the local tobaggon run and of course we all bet he couldn't and wouldn't. Never to turn down a dare we snuck in park where the tobaggon run was and I have to admit that it gave me the willies just to look at the thing, I thought it was terrifying in the winter on a flat wooden tobaggon let alone trying to go down this thing on the summer ON A BIKE. I chickened out and waited near the end of the run, he lugged his Stingray type bike up the tower and onto the track. He stood there for a few minutes, I almost hoped he too would chicken out. Nope, he raised it to the launch platform, hopped up on it and pushed off. Immediately I was sick knowing I was going to witness my friend bash his brains out or do a rendition of that ski jump guy on the old Wide World of Sports intro. I wanted to look away as he sailed down the steep incline, he wobbled a bit and again I tried to look away again but couldn't. He managed to maintain his balance and sailed past me and went off the end of the run into the field beyond and way past where the tobaggons would end their run and finally did a fairly high speed wipe-out on his left side as the bumps in the grass took their toll He sprang up without a scratch and started to dance around like a madman. He was THE MAN for the remainder of the school year. I can't remember his last name but man do I remember what he did.

So what do you have about something stupid you did, or witnessed someone do - on a bike?

robble

STupid? I was DA MAN! Years later you still remember my feat!


Nah, different Rob. I wouldv'e chickened out.

andrew.ferrell

When I was 13 I was riding my bmx to school. The first part of my route involved going down a steep trail from my neighborhood appropriately called Suicide Hill. I lost control on the steepest part and proceeded from the trail into morning traffic when I flipped over my bars. Scared s***less, I pulled myself and the bike onto the curb afraid of being run over. Luckily, the traffic was moving slow and the dude in the car behind was just kinda waiting and shaking his head.

I still like drinking whisky before a mountain bike ride with friends. I guess I'll wait for that one to catch up to me.

wahoonc

Plowing leaf piles with a Schwinn Heavy Duty.... old fart on one block put a trash can full of bricks in his... I got even.

Aaron

Flying Merkel

Rode down five flights of sand-covered stairs on my Specialized MTB.

Rootman

A little OT on my own started thread but it got me wondering who was the guy on the Wide World of Sports montage that wiped out on the ski jump, blessed be Google : https://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...orld_of_sports

TampaRaleigh

Way back in the 80's I was on a group ride that started on a somewhat chilly morning. After about an hour, it started to warm up and I really wanted to take my sweatshirt off, and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to try to do that while we were sill riding. (I didn't want to slow everybody down.) The spot where I decided to do it was a narrow bike lane on a bridge... one way, about 3 ft wide, a guardrails on both sides. I managed to get my shirt off quickly enough, but as soon as I reached back down for the bars with my shirt still in hand, a sleeve caught in the front between the tire, fork, and brake. I flipped rather quickly, and two riders behind me ended piling on. So, here I was, on my back, unable to roll over, my bike and 2 others with riders on top of me. And those were the days of clips and straps. It was not easy getting untangled.

ka0use

i don't know his name/nationality, but i did hear that he 'only' broke a leg. scariest ski jump i ever saw was during the grenoble olympics. a japanese dude completely overshot the landing area and landed in the trees.
i swear, the entire world held it's breath and said a prayer for him.
some seconds later he skiied out the far side, unharmed- but i bet his hair turned white!
the judges disqualified his jump, saying to allow it would encourage others to try and best him, with probable life threatening injuries or death.
they made him jump again and he landed far short; no medal.

mine: boulder canyon, colorado. 17 miles long twisting, and in places steep. i did it downhill with a friend who had a computer on his bike. he dropped out at 58 m.p.h. i kept accelerating and THEN.....

i climbed on the crossbar and straightened my legs while hanging onto the bar. my butt was sticking up pretty high. i was going so fast the centrifugal force was pulling me to the guardrail on tight curves. i had to go almost halfway into the oncoming lane on blind curves. i passed a couple of cars going my way. good thing they were on the straights and i had time to see them and cross the line.

i started braking a ways from boulder (still steep) and the brake pads melted or burned; either way they were fast ceasing to perform their job. i zoomed down canyon boulevard into traffic and lights and THEN.....
i did something stupid.

ha! gotcha! as if the whole ride wasn't um......ill advised.

actually the brakes did bring me to a seriously smoking halt. i have since been informed the heat from the brake friction could have blown one/both tires.

the ride ain't over yet- i continued on to arvada, some 30 miles away, got into northern arvada......
and got a flat on the rear tire. gee, rodney, what if that had happened in the canyon?

next day, we rode to golden and whilst sitting outside foss drug (now performance cycles, a chain) the front tube exploded, pulling the tire off the rim. i jumped a little, at first (a line to a paratroop joke).

allllllllllllllllllll my guardian angels went on strike for danger pay and a substantial increase in wages.

i've done other equally stupid things, but this is the only one in which i escaped injury/death.

a math problem : how many cubics inches (length/width/DEPTH) are in an area of 16" x 9" x 1/8"? i come up with 18in.3.

whatever the number there was an awful of of pain for several weeks and i still have the scars, though faded and shrunk by age. they're still purple, too. back, butt (one cheek) and hands. the hands don't show purple, but one is permanently curled a bit. no broken bones or internal injuries. well, maybe brain dead, but that was BEFORE i started doing stupid things.

umazuki

I grabbed my stem and tried to steer from that. It doesn't work.

toytech

Installed brake pads backwards and rode down The Marin in Berkeley...

ka0use

woof!

009jim

I rode up a car servicing ramp (about 5 foot off the ground and each tire track about 1 foot wide). When I got to the end I tried to put my foot down but just fell over and landed with my bike on top of me. Broken collar bone!

buffalowings

Biking along a empty street, tried to eat a packet of oreo cookies and ended up running into a tree, low speed collision, but I looked like a idiot to the driver in the jeep that passed by moments later.

Looigi

There're so many it's hard to choose. How about the latest: I was with a group of ~15 and we stopped at an intersection to the right of a city bus also stopped. Rather than unclip and put my foot down, I just rested my hand on the bus. The light changed, the bus started moving, the riders in front of me didn't, so I fell over and knocked over 3 other riders in the process.

Most embarrassing: Returning to work after a lunchtime ride with a group of coworkers, I was in the lead as I slowly approached the curb at front of our office at right angles intending to ride up it as I often did, first shifting back to unweight the front wheel as it went up the curb and then forward to likewise unweight the rear wheel. My mind was elsewhere, I mistimed it going too soon such that I unweighted the rear wheel just as the front wheel hit the curb causing me to do a perfect slow-motion cartwheel landing squarely on my face and balancing there for a few seconds before falling sideways. My coworkers were greatly amused.

Captain Blight

Proposed to my ex.

cplager

I knew we'd get one of these eventually.

GhaleonBIKER

Me and my friends call it the Park avenue dare(NYC). We ride across when the lights are a second from turning green.
Race or die- we raced down the westside from 97th and 6th all the way to 12thave no stopping going at least 40mph.
Wouldn't do it today and if i did I would definetely wear a helmet.

krobinson103

Never done anything suicidal on a bike.. unless you count trying to kick a big ugly dog that was trying to eat me. Shifted too far to the side and piled into a folded awning. Bikes derailer got messed up and I ended up riding home with 9 gears out 24 working. I still managed a 6 hour riding time century though. Have to admit it hurt a lot the next day. Since that day the mtb I was riding got dubbed the tank because I can't think of many bikes that can take sort of an impact and only end up with a messed up derailler.

Now the craziest thing I ever did was pull out of stop light in racing mode on my 125cc scooter only to find someone in the middle of the road u turning I suspect. Anyway the car stopped blocking BOTH lanes and leaving me with a choice - shoot for a gap not much wider than the bike between the curb and the cars front bumper or high side over the car at 30mph and die. Somehow that day I got through the gap at 30mphwith a little to spare and got home. Then sat for an hour or so wondering just how I managed not to die that day.

tagaproject6

Maybe she didn't find proposing on a bike very romantic

erig007

Clipping my shoes before climbing a very stiff hill.
Ride fast first then slow down, slow down....slow down until my speed is more or less 0.
The problem is that my feet are still clipped on the pedals.
Tar taste good!

Rootman

I did this too, was spinning like crazy and did not dare slow down enough to pull my feet loose and could not manage to twist and pedal that hard at the same time. I powered on through but dang I nearly came to a stand still a few times.

RaleighSport

Doing bunny hops on a mtb that didn't have it's stem properly secured.. up in the air suddenly realize I'm holding the bars and they're not attached to the bike... I got super lucky as I came down the stem went back into the steerer and I hit the brakes but believe me I was working out a bail out plan in that split second...

Drunken night ride with no lights across one of the larger cities here.. that was sketchy to say the least.

Riding junkers with no tuneups I have lost more then 1 crank arm at high speed.. I've gotten quite good at stepping off the bike and tossing it!

fietsbob

Fall off and break bones.

LarDasse74

I once left my front driveway, and heard a clicking noise coming from my drivetrain and continued pedalling while staring down at my chain to figure out what the cause was. I won't go into too much detail, but I should let you all know that the back window of a parked minivan is much harder than the human face.

RaleighSport

You just reminded me of another incident.. one time I left home on one of my SS's road for about 20 miles before my chain popped off, had forgotten to lock down the rear wheel nuts after I had snugged them up to line up the wheel/tension the chain.