Originally Posted by Sgt C USMC

I fell. Hard. Okay, I didn't fall, but I really wished I did considering what happened.

I was on my way back home at the tail end of a 25 mile ride , and I pulled up to a stop light. I unclipped the left foot out of my Time RSX pedals, and put my left foot down waiting for the light to turn green . As I was waiting, a truck entered my 'comfort zone' or the 1 foot bubble around my bike. Instinctively, I moved my left foot inward to avoid it gettiing run over. This caused me to shift my weight over to the right side, promptly standing the bike back upright with my right foot still clipped in. I was tipping over to the right side, and I didn't want to fall over to that side, there was a curb at about rib height and I probably would've fractured one or two if I had landed on it. I panicked.

What happened next was as far from graceful as possible. I jerked and jerked (because your brain doesn't think 'TWIST!!' ) and eventually I yanked my foot out of the cleat. Unfortunately the force necessary to accomplish this also yanked me out of the saddle and forward, and I ended up landing square on the crossbar (I'll let your imaginations figure out what part of me landed on the crossbar). To add insult to injury, once my feet finally came down underneath me, they came down with such force that I broke one of my brand new cleats and scuffed the CF on my new Specialized BG Comp shoes. To make matters worse, that stoplight hadn't turned green yet, so I was forced to sit there like an idiot while the entire intersection pointed and laughed at my misfortune. I'm sure it's on a Youtube video somewhere.

And top it all of , that intersection still left me 5 more miles of hilly riding before I got home, which left me PLENTY of time to think just how STUPID that was.

So author, does THAT count as falling ?