Originally Posted by
ExPatTyke
Not so much the crash but the aftermath...
Back in the days when I was racing I was on a training ride around some of the local villages, on a wet day. Pushing through a corner by a farm I lost the back wheel on a patch of bovine by product and the bike went down, sliding across the road with me attached until it came to rest in a hedge. No one to witness the crash, or to help out, except for a few cows watching in bemusement over a gate, and it took a few minutes to extricate myself from the bike and the hedge (I was tightly strapped in with clips and straps, as this was before the days of Look pedals).
Standing up, making sure I still had everything attached, and straightening the bars I realised that one side of me was now plastered in the aforementioned bovine by product, that I had lost a significant amount of skin on my right leg and arm, that I had lost an even more significant area of fabric on my shorts, and that the quickest way home was through the town centre.
I went the long way home, with leg and arm feeling more painful with every extra yard. The tetanus shot from my doctor the next day was quite unpleasant too.
I believe this is a good place to pull out a quote from my ex's mom, her response to his brother's story about a kid he was on a bike tour with in France, who bailed out and landed in a cow pie. Now, I can't remember if he then mentioned extensive cleaning of the wounds, an infection, a hospital stay, or what, but her remark was, "Cows are not sterile critters." I haven't a clue why I thought that was funny enough that it stuck with me, but it was the first thing I thought of when you mentioned missing skin covered in cow pie...
Originally Posted by
jpescatore
For me it is a tie between:
1. A bee flew into me while I was riding on a local path and fell down into my shirt (with many people around.) I once had an allergic reaction to a bee sting, was supposed to carry and epipen around but had stopped doing so. I came to a halt, tried to get the bee out of my shirt - but, of course, I was clipped in, fell over - into the grass on the downhill side (better than falling the other way onto the path, I guess.) and rolled down the hill a bit while beating at my chest - much to the amusement of everyone staring at me.
But we want to know... did the bee get you or not?? (I assume not, as you don't mention another allergic reaction, but...)