Commuting - Your most embaressing ride ever...

Post your most personally embaressing ride stories that you have ever done :)

Mine:

Bought a brand new bike, and thought I'd ride it home and buy some gear for it in the Tesco's on the way back (they had a sale on some bike related gubbins), so started riding the 11 miles home, about 5 miles in I see a friend of mine from uni riding back from seeing Castell Coch (a castle at the top of a mountain thats part of my commute home), so we stop and chitchat for 5 minutes. I get back on the bike, not realising that im in my highest gear, so I have to stand up and give it a good few pumps to get it going. Not knowing the route home, I had no idea that just around the corner was a cycle gate.

CRASSSSHH!!!! I plow into it whilst im looking down trying to get my bike started up to speed.

I fall off in the middle of the gate, and my bike falls on top of me. It was a pretty bad fall and I ended up with people trying to help me up with my bike. few minutes later after I dust myself off I notice a cool feeling at the back of my leg, its hurting.. so I think I've just cut myself a bit and its blood. so I ignore it and just get on my bike and vow to ride the 5 miles home as fast as possible so I can sort my cuts and scrapes out. (my knuckles were smashed into the metal gate and it was painful to pull my brakes), a mile or so later im making good progress.. completely knackered its the first time I've ridden a bike in say er.. must be at least 8 years flying along anyway... in a rhythm. when Psssshhhhhhhhhttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!

My back tyre is punctured by the tiniest tiniest thorn I've ever seen. pulled it out of my tyre, but the one thing I didnt buy at tesco's was a puncture repair kit, so I walk another mile or so until I hear a familiar sound of a train stopping and the BEEP BEEP BEEP doors closing sound. I find a bridge, cross the river and railway to find myself at a railway station in the middle of nowhere according to me. A bunch of girls are there so I ask them where abouts I am and explain the situation.

Then I call my parents to come pick me up as I have no dosh to get the train, my bike's bust and im SOL. I notice the girls were looking at me like I was a wierdo or a strange man and I think nothing of it im cut up... bruised, and my bikes busted, I've got more things to worry about than the odd looks im getting.

Parents come and I get picked up, get home and as I get out of the car I can hear laughing behind me from the kids across the road when I get in the following conversation takes place.

Mum: "did you know you've ripped your trousers open..."
Me: "er.. what?!" *feeling behind my arse*
Mum: "yea.."
Me: *Feels loose material* "awww what!!"

I take off my trousers, they had a swathe of material torn out of them from the ankle hem bit, right to the waist. EVERYTHING was on show including my sweat soaked boxers and arse. I just didnt notice due to the pain that I was in from falling off.

See if you can top that! :P

Perhaps the girls liked your arse. And daaaaaaaaaaaaamn...girls from Wales...there was a Welsh girl a met at a club in Germany years ago. I still think about her every now and then.

rofl... I was a hefty 280lbs+ lol!!! to have liked my arse they'd have to have been nuts! :D

Haha, great story. Sounds like a fun ride.. :D

I don't have too many embarassing ride stories. Though one time when I was twelve I was on my mountain bike, riding no-handed on the ol Burke-Gilman trail. I was going down a straightaway, pretty much showing off with the whole arms-folded-across-chest deal, when I lost control and crashed into the fence on the right. There were a bunch of thorn bushes. A lot of people were there, and since I was a kid a lady stopped and asked if I was okay. I was left with a brusied ass and slightly more bruised ego. :)

That I will admit to to the entire planet via the internet? As a kid I wanted to see what it would be like to swap hands on the handlebars. Promptly face planted in front of 20 or so neighbors. Several adult men came over to see if I was ok. Minor road rash and great embarrasssment.

There are a couple of stories I will only tell to someone with middle stage Alzheimers when we are alone. Enough attention span to listen to the story and no ability to remember it.

Nobody saw it. I ain't talking. It didn't happen.

When I got my first paycheck from my first job, I went down to Walmart and bought a Huffy road bike... (My first ever new bike) So... we loaded it up in the truck, brought it home, and I went over everything, made sure it was assembled properly, tight, adjusted, etc.

By the time we were done, it's getting dark out, but I REALLY need to take it out for a test ride.... no lights, only the reflectors that are on the bike.

No problem, we're in a small town, neighborhood, hardly any traffic... so out I go.

I'm cruising down a cinder road, no street lights or anything, and hit a rut where someone got stuck and spun their tires getting out.... FLIP! Bike goes one way, I go the other.

Normally, I could roll with the landing, and hardly even feel it, but... no lights. It's PITCH black, and I can't see the ground coming.

I skidded about 10 feet down the cinder road on my left arm... removing a good deal of skin from my wrist to my elbow, tore my pants and my shirt, and gouged out a 3/4 inch deep hole right below my elbow (I still have that scar!)

I limped my bike home (luckily it was only a half block...)

Yeah... that was fun to explain. :p

Alright, what the hell. I'm not proud. So not proud that I actually have two quick tales.

When I was 11, I had the Canadian version of a Stingray with the big ape hangers and had gone to my old neighbourhood to visit friends after having not seen them since I moved six months earlier. On the way home, I was flying down a steep gravel road when the ding-ding-ding warning bells and barriers came down on either side of the railway tracks at the bottom of the hill. I slammed on my brakes, but we all know how easy ape-hangers are to handle at top speed and they went one way, then the other, then back and...well...the bike and I tumbled and slid to the bottom of the hill. When I stood up, my clothes were in tatters and I had a million scrapes and abrasions. I had to walk about five miles home, so stiff from the cuts and blood, I must have looked like a zombie. To this day I bear scars of where gravel became embedded under the skin on my right knee.

When I was 17, I lived on my own and my apartment was the party place of choice for my friends with no worries about parents butting in if we were smoking a doob or drinking. Well, someone brought a bottle each of rye and rum, but we didn't have mix. Since I had money and a bike, I offered to zip out to the convenience store in the pouring rain to go get coke. On the way back, the rain was relentless and comin in slanted, stinging my eyes. I could only glance up every so often and keep my head down most of the time, because it was impossible to look straight ahead. Once, when I looked up, there was a parked car directly in front of me. I attempted to veer out of the way, but the bike turned and my body didn't. I sailed over the trunk, roof and hood while the bike skidded on the ground around the drivers side. After slamming my chin into the hood ornament (yep, still have the scar), I slid off the side of the hood where my foot went through the spokes, firmly trapping my ankle to the front wheel. As luck would have it, a cop was right across the road and witnessed the whole thing (they were never ever around when I needed them before) and he wrote me up a ticket ("it's a traffic accident, you know") and took me to the hospital to get stitches. I got home three or four hours later and both the bottle of rum and rye were empty and my blurry-eyed friends looked up at me and slurred 'hey man, where were you with the mix?'

Oh I got a couple. First one, I was about 10 and riding down this big hill with a gravel road. I made sure to tell my friend to be really really careful and not go to fast. I of course being the showoff that I was did not heed my own advice and ended up going pretty fast, paniking and locking up my brakes. Down I went and spent the next couple of days picking gravel out of my road rash.

Second one. I was riding down the street minding my own business staring off into space (I mean really really REALLY off in my own little world) Next thing I know I look up and see a face. Then I see clouds. I ended up putting a hole in the top of my left wrist the size of a quarter, bleeding profusely from my knee and right hand and I smacked my jaw against the ground or my handlebars or something and dislocated it. Not fun.

Oh when I was about 6 I was riding and watching the ground pass underneath me and looked up and ran into the back of a horse trailer. Cracked my kneecap, my front fork ended up looking like this |- so one was pointing correctly and the other was at a 90 degree angle.

Last one, I was mountain biking on a trail next to a lake. I had a full suspension bike that I had just gotten so I wasn't used to it. My feet were strapped in so I wouldn't fly off the bike and I hit a root or something in the trail and launced myself towards the water. Instead of flying into the lake I decided to lean the other way and smacked into a tree. Bruised ribs. Then my sister comes riding up behind me and yells at me because I am laying tangled in my bike in the middle of the trail. Ah you can feel the love.

When I was a kid the neighbour's son challenge me to a sprint, I always hated him. So we took off, I was in the front feeling good that I was beating him until I hit a rock in the middle of the road, fell down, skinned my knees.

Yeah, that scar under my chin I've had since I was a child, has something to do with a milk crate, a piece of plywood and a fifth grade girl.
--A

lol! :) some rather amusing stories there :D

And paaahh!!! to the ones too chicken to post em up! :P If you cant laugh at life! what can you laugh at! :D

AlienG: Question is... did you at least get some sympathy from the lass? :D

AlienG: Question is... did you at least get some sympathy from the lass? :D

Well....I committed the ultimate uncool sin. I let the tears fall.
I did get an ice cream sandwich from the nurse. And my stitches let me play the "wanna see? Oooo--gross--cool" game for about a week.

--A

I rode an insanely cheap and heavy Schwinn BMX bike (with coaster brakes no less) when I was a kid. Some friends and I were fooling around the jumps in an abandoned lot when some girls walked by. I decided to play the hero and flew off a jump and tried a tabletop. As I crashed the bike went left and I went right. Somehow I managed to get a toenail torn off. The girls, however, did not seem impressed enough to glance my way.

1. About 8-10 years old biking with my younger sister and mother while we were on vaccation. Being the big boy, I was out ahead and looking back and rode smack into the back of a moped that was parked on the side of the road. Stupid.

2. About 13-14 years old, was riding home from a store with the shopping bag hanging off my left handlebar. As I was going down a hill I wondered what would happen if I brushed the bag against my quickly rotating spokes. I guess I figured it would make a "zzziiipp" sound and bounce away. Of course, what happened was the bag got caught in the spokes, made the trip around the hub, stuck in the fork, stopping my wheel and bike, I endo and really hurt my shoulder and elbow. Had to wear a sling for 2 weeks. Sooooo stupid.

Not too bad but here goes (I've posted it on BF before). Riding the down twisty, narrow ramp to exit the George Washington Bridge in NYC, I unclipp to make it around the little switchback. I am rolling toward the gate on the last ramp trying to clip in with a badly worn cleat. Ahead of me on the way up is an attractive young lady cyclist in full kit. Now I'm not looking for any attractive young lady cyclists as I happen to be married to one, but the distraction combined with the trouble clipping back in lead me to crash smack into the side of the (open) gate. OTB, over the bars, smack! on my back in front of said young lady. Bruised ego and slightly bruised body accompanied sheared shifter housing. :D

I was once volunteering to help out with a large fundraising rummage sale... they filled up a bunch of ballons with helium, tied them to a broom pole, and sent me a half mile up the road to flag down passers-by on the highway. Naturally, I rode my bike to the corner.

After about an hour and a half or so, most of the ballons have leaked their helium, or popped, so I hop on the bike to go back and get more... unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the now hanging strings and balloon.... Yeah... you guessed it, right into the front wheel, pulling the broomstick in after.

I sheared about half the spokes in the front wheel before crashing. I didn't get much more than a few bruises, as I managed to keep from going over the handlebars, ended up falling sideways. Had to limp the rest of the way, more carrying the bike than pushing it.

Let's see......
No, can't tell you about that. Or that one. Nope. Nope........OK, this one is OK.
On the track, district championships, third round of eliminations for sprints. Me and the other rider at the start line, we start, get the pushoff, I take one pedal stroke and my toe clip strap gets caught between the chain and the chainwheel. Down in a heap! The other rider is looking back over his shoulder with a WTF look on his face. (My old straps were worn out and too frayed to trust, so I put new ones in that morning, but didn't shorten them.) Restart. I won the heat, but only because the other guy was afraid to get too close to me!
The really embarrassing thing about it was I was feeling like a big swingin' something all week before that, really looking forward to the weekend, so I invited a bunch people to come and watch, and several actually showed up. That was in the late 80's and I'm still hearing crap about it.

(1) Last summer, I got a ride home from someone late, and I removed the front wheel to fit the bike in the back of her car. She dropped me off, I put the wheel back on in front of my house, and pushed off toward the driveway. Now, my driveway is set into a hill which rises up to the house on the left, and dips down to the neighbor's driveway on the right, with about a 3' slope of rock to hold it. As I start turning into the driveway, I sense I'm going a little too fast, and apply the brakes. Except - I forgot to re-connect the front brake from having the wheel off!! Down the hill, over the rocks, into the neighbor's driveway. Fortunately, my ride had already driven off, and it was late at night, so no one saw me! :rolleyes:

(2) Once on my morning commute, I was wearing loafers that were a little too loose, and one came off in the middle of the intersection. Which was embarassing enough, but of course then I had to walk back out into the middle of the intersection with one sock foot to pick it up! :o

rofl... I was a hefty 280lbs+ lol!!! to have liked my arse they'd have to have been nuts! :D

I thought they measured weight in kilos in the UK. Where are you really from mate?

I'm sorry, I didn't notice it was a commuting-related thread.

About ten years ago I was working evenings, which means I got off at 11pm, and rode home then. Most of the ride was on a bike trail, and there was limited traffic at that time otherwise. I was set up pretty good with blinkie lights and reflective stuff all over.
One night, I was riding the usual route on the trail, but in a seriously dark area, with no street lights and lots of trees to block whatever ambient or moonlight there was. Well, I heard some noise, but it seemed far ahead of me, so I paid no mind to it. After about thirty seconds, whammo! Two guys on bikes coming the other direction and I meet head on. Boy, was I pissed! I really gave them the whatfor about not having lights and being unsafe at night. Get a clue, and all that. After apologizing, one of them poited out that my blinkie lights weren't working either, and there wasn't enough light to make the reflective stuff useful. Humble pie for me, because I had never turned my blinkie lights on. If I had, there wouldn't have been the problem!

Nobody saw it. I ain't talking. It didn't happen.
Ditto. Now forget this conversation ever happened.

my worst moment was when I was waiting at a light and I tried to time it and get into my spd pedals while track standing. Now I had gotten pretty good at it and thought I could do it. I put the cleat over the pedal and pushed down. The botton of my shoe is carbon fiber and VERY slick. My foot slipped off the pedal and through me off balance. My front wheel went sidways and the bike when right out from under me. My shimano 105 brake/gear levers smacked the ground and the plastic peices on tope broke. and I hurt my hands to. But mostly my pride was hurting........

About 12, neighborhood boys made a ramp with plywood and crates. We were jumping it. :love: Catherine :love: showed up with her giggling friends. I was next. Evel Knevel was popular. I rode to the top of the ramp and stopped ala Knevel to survey the jump. Think teetertotter or seesaw with almost enough weight to balance. Ever so slowly I flopped onto my face with bike, plywood ramp and crate all ending up on top of me some how. I can still hear the giggling gaggle of girls.

Could definitly be the time somewhere around 12 years old, early stages of bike mechanic tinkering. I had adjusted the handlebar stem on my stingray and took it out for a test run (my parent's house stood at the top of a large hill). I started pedaling down the hill when I realized the virtue of tightening stem bolts. The bars pulled loose in my hand and I did my best Superman impersonation when the front wheel flipped perpendicular to the frame (and direction of travel). Ended up with stitches in my left knee and an assortment of bumps and scrapes.

Unless you count the horizontal track stand I did last summer on a commute home, right after I went with clippless pedals. Definitly left some bark on that one too.

I thought they measured weight in kilos in the UK. Where are you really from mate?

Wales, in the south wales valleys (about 11miles north of cardiff)

We may be a metric nation but you can still buy sweets in quarters, and most scales here do Stones and lb's as well as kilos.

I was 20 Stone, which at 14 Lb's per stone = 280 Lbs.

I've converted it to lbs as well most of the people on this forum are american from what I've seen, and most diet and fitness sites and calcs take either kilos or lb's. I've no idea how many kilos there are to a stone (never found out) just seemed easier to calculate it in lbs. Spesh as I give my height in feet and inches :)

Age 10 or 11, showing off for the neighborhood girls, I rode down the steepest hill in town with my hands crossed right hand to left bar etc. I made it about 1/2 way down before I lost control & went offroad into the brambles & blackberries. Nothing more cruel to our fragile male egos than a girl's laughter ! Didn't hurt a bit, I'm fine, really! (Something we still laugh at today). Notice a common thread here, pre-teen boys + bikes = watch out

I dunno - you convert to pounds for the merkins, and they're still not happy! :)

2.2 lbs to the kilo. 14 lbs to the stone. Roughly 6 kilos to the stone, by my reckoning? I dunno, I've never totally got on with metric weights either.....

Most embarassing moments of mine hark back to the days of BMX, about 11 yrs old.

I lived on the edge of town, which was being built up with apartments and houses. There was a large hilly apartment site that must have been the dump site for all the residential excavation, so it made for some radical track racing. No girls in this story, just a 6' "grave" with a launch at one end, a landing ramp at the other, a good downhill approach, and a bunch of triple-dog-dares. I had just bought my first "good" bike, a used GT BMX hand-me-down from a real racer for $100, so I was going to be first. the bike weighed half of my Huffy Pro Thunder, so I flew higher and farther than ever before, missing the landing ramp. I had my front wheel pretty high, overcorrecting for the old beater, so when I landed, the back wheel ran right out from under me. I slid on my 'arse' in gym shorts for at least a good 10 yards leaving me with an Atomic Wedgie and a raw left cheek/hip. Still have a scar 21 years later.

Oi! What was it about 5th grade...?

I was showing off for the lovely and talented Danielle DiBlasi, on my orange Western Auto gas pipe 10 speed. Rolling down her street, I pull my patented one-foot-on-the-saddle-one-high-in-the-air-behind-me-hands-on-the tops-of-the-drops maneuver. Just as I caught her eye, I somehow decided that I was stable enough to REMOVE BOTH HANDS FROM THE BARS, and stand on the saddle on one foot, while continuing to roll smoothly down Jade Lane. I rolled smoothly for one billionth of a second, before crashing spectacularly.

Still, Dani and I wound up 'going together' for a good while. Learning to French Kiss made it all better...

my moment came just a few years ago. I was climbing a long hill on my way home in the early fall in the dark. As I climb the hill, a large quickly moving stream a water was pouring down the road. I realized they were releasing water from a fire hydrant and pouring it into the road at the 4 way stop. I slowly make my way into the intersection, balancing and waiting my turn. Everyone stops for me so I put tried to crank through. Well, just as I start to hammer through the water I realize I am on top of a metal road plate. At a very slow speed my bike slips out from underneath me, I drop into the fast water which has enough power to slide me across the metal plate. People get out of their cars to check on the EXTREMELY WET biker. I was fine and slowly made my way home, albeit a rather chilly ride.

Anyone else notice how many of these stories involve the presence of the "fairer sex"?

And yes, my story's coming.

I have a few embarassing stories, but none are as funny as this one from a friend (no really, this wasn't me!). It's long but VERY funny.

A little background. Nathalie is the writer's wife, and she was about 9 months pregnant at the time. Joe is her brother. I'm the "BJ" he mentions near the end (and his reference is to one of my embarassing rides, btw).

Ok, so Nathalie says "take Joe biking".

We go to Crabtree (Lake Park) and let Talya trike on the walking trails for a bit. Then I am going to take Joe to the easy trails to show Mtn biking is ok and easy and not dangerous.

The previous week I changed the pedals on the Klein for him since I use the purple bike for the child seat and it still has clipless pedals. Joe has the Klein and I have the purple monster.

So we are riding from the boathouse to the trail head, I bunny-hop the first speed bump and not quite clear it. I get a lot of speed going to clear the second one, maybe it turned out the purple bike don't wanna bunny-hop or I am not quite in shape enough to hop a 40-lb bike. Anyway I kinda wobbled and planted into the pavement. Scrapes, bruises, scratched helmet, the works.

One of those great road ones where all the cars stop and people get out and will not leave until you stand up and say you're ok so they can leave and you can lay back down and moan in peace. And the whole time I am thinking "Nathalie is going to kill me because a) I will be no help b) I will be in a body cast for the baby pictures. Some doctor woman stops, pokes, says "You have cracked ribs, go to the ER" and leaves. Joe says she was cute but my eyes were still out of focus.

Ended up going to the ER
a) Because I was sure I must have broken something
b) I was in too much pain to walk upstairs to take a shower.

Anyway, according to the ER doctor the ribs and the rest are just bruised but the shoulder is separated (even I can see it in the x-ray). Today I see the orthopedics to find out how much damage I did and how long to heal. As you can see I can still type and use my right arm but it is in a sling for now.
And you guys thought you had an adventure, I had more adventure than your three days and 60 miles just from the parking lot to the trailhead. HA!

Lessons learned:
1. Pavement hurts (just could have asked BJ, this seems redundant)
2. When you go to the ER, tell them you fell off of a bicycle, if you say bike they freak out.
3. The nurse tech on duty on Saturday night is in a bad mood. I scrub the deck more gently than nurse ratchet cleaned my scrapes
4. Much to my being anti-medication, ibuprofen-800 works wonders

i wear lycra shorts on my training rides, and one day it was so humid that as i came to a stop light, i stepped off the seat to stretch and my shorts were stuck to my saddle. i mooned everybody. now i only wear bibs

ROFL @ pancakeman :D lol!!!!

and itsjustb: its "your most" not "your mates 2nd cousin's best mates nan" :P Get those damn stories up ere!! :D

>>> do with a milk crate, a piece of plywood and a fifth grade girl

So was there an actual bike invilved? :)

I rammed a few parked cars before, about 10 years ago or so. The first one was at ultra low speed, no big deal, I was leaving a friends house just coasting down the driveway, looking back at friend, and hes sporting this crazy "what the hell are you doing?" look on his face. I have no idea why, then I found out when I rode right into his sisters parked honda rust bucket, hes laughing his ass off, and I am too of course, while still on the hood.

Then I did it again, this time on the street at a much higher speed, happened the exact same way, I was looking back at a different friend, who'm had the same crazy expression on his face. Just when Im about to say something like "what the hell is wrong with you?" WHAM! Clobbered someones parked car, went over the bars and remained on the vehicle.

I dont find these embarrasing really, although I guess if more people witnessed it it would be another story. Some of my happier memories really.

One that I get asked to tell again and again at the bar and on fishing trips. They just won't let this one die.

I was living in Minneapolis (St. Louis Park, actually), and decided to ride through downtown one sunny Saturday. I'm riding down Hennepin, when the road is blocked off. So, I walk my bike down the sidwalk trying to figure out why the road is blocked off, and for so many blocks. An out of town family asks me where the Grand Prix is, so I give them directions to the Metrodome, and figure this must be part of the Grand Prix, but it just didn't fit. Soon, I'm in the middle of a crowd, and it seems like everybody's anticipating something. So I stand there in my bike shorts, mesh t-shirt, and sandals, trying to catch on. Once the parade came down the street, it was clear in an instant that I was in the middle of the gay pride parade. Now I had gay friends, and had no issue with the whole event, but started feeling a little weird when protesters handed me a little bible and told me it wasn't too late. Then, I realize I'm standing behind a news reporter, right in front of the camera!

The embarassing part is that I told my wife about it all, who worked at the same company, who told my friends (gay and straight), who start interrogating me about why they saw me on the news (no one actually did).

slowly rolling around a parking lot when I noticed a small stick stuck in the spokes of my front wheel, I bent over and tried to pull it out when my hand jammed between the fork and the spokes. I then peddeled myself over the bars and onto the ground in slow motion. Glad my friends were all there watching at the time, I wouldn't have wanted to waste the moment on myself.

rather than unclipping at traffic lights I lent on a pedestrian rufuge sign.This partular one was not bolted to the floor, both sign and rider fell over slowly on to road!

15 years old going to work (1974-ish) on my old yeller 10-speed :love: attempting a new world's record for hard lean left turn while running stop sign at T intersection. FAIL. Low-sided and skidded off 6' embankment into nice soft gravel. That stopped traffic. Wish I had a pic of that dirt cloud. Passing motorists helped me find my glasses. Damn, that was tough bike - no damage.

So there's this bit on my route home where there's a bike lane you join from the road, through a gap in some railings. The kind of railings that look something like this:

|----|----|----|----| (gap here) |-----|-----|----|----|

So one lovely evening - clear, dry, tailwind - I'm rolling along nicely, about to join the bike path. And then find myself coming to a VERY abrupt stop. Hear people laughing. And my arms are killing me.

I'd missed the gap. Though the gap was in the same place as every other night I'd ridden that route the last 5 years. And I'd ridden - without slowing down - at about 20mph - into a railing. In sight of people.

So I make a quick getaway. And wear long sleeves the next 2 weeks to avoid explaining the symmetrical, purple bruises on my arms.

I was riding across campus and, as I often do, took a shortcut that had me jump a curb, ride down an alley and back onto the next street over,but this time when I went to jump the curb my foot snapped the strap on my toe clip so rather than gently hopping the curb, I went straight into the curb and over my handlebars. Unfortunately it was the middle of the afternoon so there were plenty of people around to watch.

The very first time I rode a 10-speed (yes, this was about 78 or 79 so they really were only 10 speeds)...pretty sure you can see where this is headed...

There was a new housing developement going in across the major road from my street. We were all playing around and riding on the big dirt hill. There were even some trails that had been worn into the dirt. One of the trails jumped a section that looped below it, and I was (unbeknownest to me) riding backwards. I saw the jump, knew I could not make it and grabbed a handful of brake levers. I had no clue that front and back were different, or which was which...my bike had coaster brakes. The next thing I know, I am laying-upside down in the lower track with the bike on top of me.

Not a commuting story but...

I'm a member of a local bicycle club and lead many rides...road, newbie, mountain, etc. I'd volunteered to lead a mountain bike ride with in the Denver Metro area since March isn't a good time to go out into the mountains of Colorado. I selected a route along Cherry Creek in Denver which wasn't too hard, since it's flat but it can be challenging with many obstacles like close trees and short but steep climbs.

I'd done the ride before and was familiar with all the challenging bits and, being the leader, I was showing off:o On one section of the trail, there was a tree that jutted out over the trail right over the creek. The trail went on the creek side of the tree and to ride the section properly, you had to lean to the right over the creek to clear both your body and the handlebars around the tree and then you had to quickly move the bike to the left to avoid a bend in the trail and a dropoff on the bank. The drop to the creek was about 4 feet. Not too difficult and I'd done it many times before.

Perhaps it had something to do with being the ride leader or with the ride coinciding with a March of Dimes walk-a-thon, but I was going to show everyone how to do this tricky little bit. Out in front of everyone, I approached the tree, dodged my bars to the right, then dodge my bars back to the left just like I should...except...

My bar leftward dodge hit the tree square and, according to those nasty little laws of motion, I was thrown back to the right...into space...flat on my back...4 feet above the surface of the creek. Fortunately, there was 4 feet of water in the creek that broke my fall. It is truly a curious sight to watch water fold over you as it closes in around the hole you made in it.

I sprang up out of the water with a mighty GASP! (it was March after all:rolleyes:) and one of the women walking on the path above asked, "Did he mean to do that?"

Look back to smile & wave 'bye', then look forward again just in time to plant face on car trunk lid. Bike was not harmed (it was a Schwinn) but face was bloodied & painful

Dropping your bike on a patch of algae in the desert seems pretty improbable. But I've done it.

During college in Arizona (ASU), my two roomates and I rented a townhouse about five miles from campus. None of us owned cars - we rode our bikes everywhere.

We attended a football game on a saturday evening...snuck in a bunch of vodka mixed in lime koolaid and got pretty lubricated. While riding home after the game we were doing the usual busting of each others chops and talking smack. As I was riding, I turned around to give one of my roomates a bad time...and promptly crashed into one of those low rectangular dumpsters that has an open top. Yup, over the bars I went into the dumpster. This is absolutely a true story.

My roomates were laughing so hard that they could not even muster the strength to come help me out for about five minutes. I felt no pain that night, but the next day was a different story.

To this day when I meet my roomates (25 years later) they bring up this story and I have to suffer all over again.

I'm a bike instructor, and my most embarrassing bike-related stories actually happened off bike. Like that time when I was walking a bike and talking to some kids taking a bike safety course. We were walking along the sidewalk; I was in front, looking back at them as I was walking, and talking to them about the importance of looking ahead when riding a bike. And in the middle of that speech I, of course, walk into a big concrete pole. :lol: I pretended it was intentional, to illustrate my point, but I think they knew... :D

Or the other time I was standing next to a building with a bunch of bike students around, pontificating on this and that... when a huge squirt of pigeon **** lands right on top of my head. (That's why you should ALWAYS wear your helmet... and make sure that it doesn't have too many vents. :rolleyes:)

Oh, wait, there is an on-bike one! Trying to trackstand a few days after getting clipless pedals. Resulted in the "forgot to unclip" fall of shame, in front of my whole bike class.

Boy, these make me sound like a crappy instructor, eh?.. :lol:

That is not too bad, be careful next time,haaa