You are TRULY a braver man than I will ever be! Downtown Atlanta, to me, is simple...suicide!

On page 85 of Rupert Guinness's What a Ride: An Aussie Pursuit of the Tour de France he relates a story I'd heard about Sean Kelly's practical joking side: "In the peloton he was known as a practical joker, his favorite stunt being to scrape a soft drink can on the road while the peloton was riding. This raised the hairs on every rider's neck. It was the sound they feared most, a crash."

"I thought you knew how to get back."

She talked so much she must have been inoculated with a phonograph needle.

You've been waiting a looong time to lay that track down, haven't you?

There's nothing between him and us but a thin layer of Lycra and faux-chamois!

More than anything I dread the sound of three or more people all playing different music genres at the same time through their bottle cage boom boxes during a group ride. Bob Seger, Massive Attack remixes and Geto Boys just don't go together, people.

[MENTION=182082]Mout[/MENTION]naindave, I'm with you re the repetitive sound of a faulty tubular glue job, like a single rice crispie crackle on every rotation. I've found this is often the case with tires that have not been stored & prepped properly on a spare wheel, but rather left to hang on a hook or curled up as a spare, and the problem area is typically adjacent to the valve. It's not the worst thing that could happen on a bike. Not any real damage done. But it's annoying and a drag to know the tire you just glue may have to come off and be re-glued again.

One of the most frightening sounds I've experience on a bike: I actually heard the sound of gravel getting kicked up onto the side of a car approaching me from behind. Little ping-ping-ping and a car engine. I had the presence of mind to veer way over (it was a wide shoulder) and as I looked over my left shoulder the car buzzed by me a full two feet into the shoulder. I suspect texting-while-driving. Close call. Scared the hell out of me.

Experienced a new scary sound yesterday while out riding near my house. It was quite windy out, but otherwise beautiful weather, so I went for a short little ride. Being a fairly rural area there wasn't much traffic mid day, so I'm just riding along enjoying the fresh air and not thinking about much when suddenly a big gust of wind comes through, and I start to hear loud snapping and cracking sounds... The unmistakable sound of a large tree falling!!! The sound came from directly to my right, so without even looking I just accelerated as fast as I could as a big dead pine tree crashed out of the woods and into the ditch just behind me. It wouldn't have hit me even if wouldn't have accelerated, but it was still close enough to give me a good scare!

When I was a teenager in the 80s it was definitely the sound of the rear derailleur being picked up by the spokes. As somebody above indicated, it gives you time to think "oh no" but not enough time to actually do anything about it.

Huret/Raleigh Eco mechs (did you get them in the US?) were notorious for it. Adjusting the stop screw seemed to give you the choice of not getting first at all or firing the whole lot into the spokes with nothing in between.

Not scary but pretty odd: I was in Philadelphia one Saturday morning when they had Martin Luther King Drive closed to traffic - no cars, just bikes and joggers. Really fun to blast along that 4 lane, 4 mile stretch through the trees towards the river. I was rolling along when I heard a car overtaking me, car tires quite clear and loud. I pulled over thinking "that's not right". Then a tightly packed group of about 25 bikes zoomed past - the sum of all those tires sounded like a car. A first for me.

That's why we have the following rule: "If you want to listen to music while riding, you ride alone."

I grew up pedaling around Midtown, Piedmont Park, Ansley, Candler Park & the like. Back in the 1960's it was a vastly different place than it is now. There were plenty of small farms right outside Decatur & Buckhead. The Chatahoochee River was a wilderness area. Lots of gravel roads in the suburbs. The real action was down at 10th and Peachtree Street. Biker gangs, prostitutes, drugs, Allman Brothers Concerts in Piedmont Park. Nobody went much further south than Little 5 Points in those days. The railroad tracks between Atlanta & Decatur were a physical boundary between the race, cultures, & incomes. I went to High School at Grady. Was in the same class with Martin Luther King's Daughter Yolanda. We all called her Yoki. Those were the days my friend.

The sound of a small caliber pistol being fired from an open window of a closely passing car. I smelled the gunpowder smoke as well. Either someone was a really bad shot or he didn't intend to hit me.


My paranoia now fully established, a month or so later I looked to my left at a passing car and found myself looking straight into the barrel of snub-nosed pistol. Closer look revealed that this time it was a toy cap pistol being wielded by a 6-year old. His mother promptly reached across and slapped the thing out of his hand.

White boy played the funky music.

chunk - chunk - chunk - chunk....
The sound of a branch in your rear wheel, taking out half the spokes before you can get stopped...
And knowing you're 5 miles from the nearest civilization

Creaking.

I can live with rattles, scrapes and clicks but creaking presages fatigue and failure.

Front spoke nipple noise: The "click, click" sounds like a fork that is just about to give-way, I imagine. If your fork is carbon, alloy or any combination of the two, you schedule an emergency "appropriations" meeting with your maker.

BTDT....

I was riding home from the tennis courts and was holding the racquet across the handlebars. Big white wolf-sized Shepherd didn't make a sound - his toenails on the concrete coming quickly up from behind alerted me, I looked back as he was going full-tilt-boogie and about to lunge at my right heel. My Jimmy Connors-power swing was automatic to the side of the doggie-noggin, knocking the other side of his head into my rear spokes... accompanied by a loud YELP. The adrenaline dump propelled me with blinding getaway speed....

Gastro-intestinal bubbling and gurgling.

The sound of a rear spoke breaking 15 miles from home. Nursing your bike along with a wobble in that wheel when you hear another spoke pop. The resulting 10 mile walk home because your rim is now unrideable....
Max Bryant

BTDT

- the sound of a rock striking the side of a nice car--a rock that squirted out from beneath your bike tire. So you non chalantly look in the opposite direction. "Who? Me?"

- a giant nail spearing your rear tire at high speed making a horrible noise like a ranch hand frantically ringing the supper triangle.

That's the noise I was going to describe. Happened to me as a kid. The bad news -- it was the front wheel. The good news, it was a typical kids bike that had been rode hard and put away wet. The spokes yanked right out and it just slowed me down. No endo resulted.

Growling and the tic-tic-tic of toenails just behind the rear wheel.