mharter

This morning I was riding to work on a short section of dirt path when I heard something kick up into my front spokes. Before I could think about it the bicycle was no longer beneath me, I floated there for a second and then decided to hit the ground - no problem, I made it. Then the bike hit me in the back, ouch!

I got up and checked myself out and all was well with my arms legs and other body parts (I'm glad it wasn't concrete I landed on). My bike didn't do quite as well, but it remained ridable. I looked around for the evil object and all I could find is a funny shaped rock that had some recent scrapes on it. This rock cauth the fender stays, bending them and causing one set to rip a chunk out of the fender and come free from it, but the strangest thing is that the right caliper of my front brake (side pull) was bent almost 90 degrees forward and outward. I am surprised that this could happen. My bell got smashed too.

A few days before I had something hit the spokes in the same location, and I went back to see if I could remove the nasty thing that did it. I expected a stick, not a dumb little stone. The point I would like to share is: it is well worth removing potential hazards from your commuting route before they cause accidents, I'll always be on the lookout from now on!

Matt

jyossarian

Endo's suck. Glad you're ok Matt and have a good attitude about your accident. Did anyone see you go flip over?

mharter

There were people around, but I doubt anyone saw it happen. A guy walked by as I was checking over the bike but he didn't say anything like "dude, you just flipped over!"

Matt

cyccommute 

Consider yourself lucky. It's far more embarrassing when people notice. Case in point: I was on a club mountain bike ride one fine March morning. The ride leader had planned to take people along a flat singletrack along a creek in Denver. It wasn't a particularly hard ride but the trail is twisty and lots of fun. At one point the trail goes past a bend in the river where the bank is undercut and about 5 feet below the trail. There is also a tree at this bend that is particularly tricky because you have to lean toward the creek to clear the tree with your handlebar and then immediately lean back towards the tree after the bar has cleared to get back to the line on the trail. It was a tricky move but I had done it several times before without problem. All it takes is the proper timing.

Did I mention that I was the leader of this particular ride? Or that this day happened to be the day when around 10,000 people were walking the concrete bikeway that goes above this singletrack? Or that I happened to be in the lead at that particular point?

I made my move. I leaned away from the tree just like I was supposed to and then I leaned back in to clear...except I wasn't clear! The end of my bar smacked the tree dead on. Newton's laws of motion took over and I rebounded at 90 degrees to the tree, off the bike and...into nothingness!

It's an odd sensation to hit water flat on your back and be looking up at the sky as the water envelops you and closes over your face before you settle gently to the bottom of the stream. Rather peaceful actually. That is until you realize that this is March, in Colorado, and the water comes out of the bottom of a reservior only a couple of miles upstream, and that that water is flowing out of the dam at 34.9F. I jumped up out of the water and took a breathe that sounded like a 747 taking off!

Although it seemed like hours to me since I fell off that bank, it was mere seconds! I looked up the bank and saw 10,000 people staring down at me. One of the lady walkers asked, "Did you mean to do that?"

I wanted to go back into the peaceful waters and stay there until the walk was done.

DataJunkie

Holy crap.
Where is this infamous trail located at?

cyccommute 

Cherry Creek. Just past 4 Mile House. You can do lots of off-road all the way out to Kennedy Golf Course. And it's a bit harder than you might think for a plains trail.

huhenio

Bombing down the main throughfare in my town well over 20 miles per hour. Cloudy, 30 degrees, and windy .... very windy.

Sudden gust pushed me to the median and made me hit the middle concrete thingy. It is sloped so to be forgiving in a case of a car loosing control. I hit the thing sideways and the death wobble ensued for like 10 seconds, to finally land and start rolling.

I hit the ground on a roll , cleats desengaged, and on my left hand the handlebar - with the rest of the bike - is still there.

Still rolling, pull the bike out of the traffic, (yes I am rolling and doing all these things at the same time), start the second part of the roll trying next to gain some footing. Bike flying over my head and lands kinda hard - looking to the opposite side of traffic - and I spring on my feet.

Skipping from the forward momentum, fling the bike on the traffic direction, made a few quick steps, and jump on the seat and start pedaling again.

I believe that nothing hurted till the second day ... but I also think it helped that I did not stop either.

Some nice person stopped next to me - with a true concern look on his face- and asked me if I was OK. From behind my ski mask and ski goggles I nodded and gave the thumbs up.

Thank god for the ninja hood ... It preserved me anonymous.

Eggplant Jeff

Hehe. I'm gonna go ahead and divert the thread into "general funny biking stories". Huhenio reminded me of the time I had to get off the bike to lift it past an obstacle... and there was a guy walking so of course I want to make it look all smooth. Ride up, jump off, smoothly lift over, take two steps, back on the saddle, ON TOP OF MY S! "Act natural!" "Just 'til I'm out of sight!" "Stay cool!" "Oooooooooouuuuuuuuuucccccccchhhhhhh!!!!"

And of course I've done the famous horizontal trackstand when I first went clipless. My 7-y.o. son stops behind me... "Dad, are you OK?"

cyccommute 

I'm just sitting here in my white room weighing gnat crap and I'm bored, so...

I live east of where I work. Where I work is right up against the Foothills of Colorado and the wind is known to roar out of the west. Makes for great fast rides home To make things even better, it's downhill all the way home! And the first 1.5 miles is a fairly steep downhill.

On this particular day, the wind was clocking about 45 mph out of the west as I headed down the hill and I was on my mountain bike...with the brand new Manitou fork. I had spun out of gears within the first half mile and was still picking up speed! I blasted down the access road at around the 45 mph. At the bottom of the hill was a left turn, for bicyclists, that takes you up a curb cut and onto a short little path that lets me cut off half a mile or so of my route. Traffic was clear and I was bookin' as I came down to the cut. But at 45 mph, I misjudged the cut and saw, even from a couple of car lengths away, that I was going to miss the cut and hit the curb. At that speed there was no way I was going to recover but, in a valiant and foolish, attempt to put a stop to my impending doom, I grabbed as much brake as I could. At least it slowed me down a little

My front wheel hit the curb and came to a dead stop. Come to think of it, my bicycles have this tendency to abandon me in my hour...errr...seconds... of need. I, unfortunately, didn't have that luxury of the complete stop. My feet came out of the pedals and I sailed, Superman-like, over the bars, completely clearing them. As I was flying through the air, I saw landscaping rocks, which after a quick calculation, I realized were a bit beyond my trajectory. The grass in front of them was my target but I seemed to be on a rather steep re-entry.

My head, or rather my helmet, came into contact with the grass just above my left eye and I pivoted, rather elegantly, upon that point as my feet went over my head and I came to rest, with a mighty whooomp!, with my feet pointing at the rocks and bits of grass hanging in my eyes from where a rather large patch of sod was stuck in my, now broken, helmet.

A co-worker happened to be coming by just after the dust settled and, in a fit of concern, asked if I was all right. I said that I was but my bike, which now had two wheels in the rear where it only had one before, was busted and I'd appreciate a ride back up to work to give my wife a call. She said, "Oh, I can't do that I have to be somewhere!" , and drove off. Leaving me to carry a broken bike 1.5 miles back up that damned hill...into the wind!

Eggplant Jeff

I need a more exciting commute. My stories just don't compare .

DataJunkie

I think I would rather have a less exciting commute as long as it kept me in one piece. Kids smoking weed or meth is enough excitement for me.

cyccommute 

Nay! You just need to learn how to emblish more My hobby, and true passion, is to sit around making up lies...um...tales about myself. Everything I tell you is the honest truth, except for the bits that aren't

2manybikes

Did the same thing with a motorcycle. The bike landed on my chest. It was not cold but the bottom of the stream was that thick black mud. It filled all the pockets of my new leather bike jacket. I was leading a couple of newbies, showing them what to do. I still ride my MTB on that trail, no one else will go, they are afraid of falling in the water, what's wrong with them?

In the picture without the bike, see the big tree on the right? See the roots going out into the path ..............................?

chephy

Wow! I am grateful I almost never crash. That's cos I'm a chicken, I'm afraid - always slow down whenever there is a slightest opportunity for any sort of problem or traffic conflict.

My last crash was about three years ago, when I was riding my then brand-new freshly bought Marin San Anselmo from a bike store. I took my left hand off the handlebars, to have a drink or something, and when I decided to put it back on the handlebar I... missed. So instead of landing on the handlebar the hand just fell into mid-air and that caused me to lose balance. To this day I have no idea how a thing this small could throw anyone off balance... But it did me. And so there comes a spectacular crash in the middle of a perfectly paved and perfectly empty road! Luckily, the bike suffered no damage. The rider didn't do so well. I still have a small scar on my finger to remind me of this.

cyccommute 

Why do you guys continue to force me to one up you?

I used to work only a few blocks from work making for a really boring bicycle commute. Some mornings (this was before children) I would get up real early and drive my truck up to a local open space and go mountain biking before heading to work. If I got out of the house at 545, I could get in a good ride and still be on time to work.

On one lovely cool summer morning, I had put in around 7 miles of mountain biking and was headed back to the car. The trail is high above the parking lot so the return is a delicious downhill. Jefferson County was also nice enough to put in water checks (a log buried in the dirt) that you could fly over and off of. If you had enough speed you could get some really good air.

I hit the top of the hill and, being a little late, was in a hurry to get back to my truck - but not in so much of a hurry that I was going to miss some play time! The first water check was no problem. I flew off it and had a ton of speed. Next one, the same. I was getting really good air. Birds were envious!

I was coming up fast on the last one. I timed it. Just as my front wheel hit the check, I squatted down on the tires... bent my legs...yanked up on my feet...twisted my hands forward..and the leaped into the air! It was the best yet! I was a good 4 feet off the ground with both wheels! I was in freefall!

I was in trouble. I looked at my right hand as it floated about 6 inches above the bar. It just hovered there, enjoying the freedom. Kind of like that feeling that you get when you put your hand out the window. My hand was enjoying the jump just as much as I would...if that hand were attached to the handlebar. At the time two thoughts went through my mind. 1. "This is bad." 2. "This is gonna hurt."

And then the ground came up to meet me and my hand. The other hand, still attached to the bar, and thinking that the right one was a fool for going off on its own like that, took over. It yanked the bar towards itself...which was exactly the wrong thing to do!

The wheel dug into the ground on the front edge. That stopped the wheel but, since we build bikes with forks that pivot, the rest of us pivoted on the fork and went "over the high side" as they call it in motorcycling. I went all the way over from the left and smacked my helmet on the right rear of my head, crushing the foam just like it was designed to do. For the single time, in all of my cycling history, I lost consciousness for just a moment. I came to, on my back, looking up at a cloud of dust slowly drifting across me. My first thought was "Wow! Wish I had a camera. That would have been cool!"

By now, however, things were starting to call in. My head was complaining about hurting. My shoulder complained about a burning sensation which came from the seam scrubbing off skin...a scar which I still have. My butt was complaining about being squished. But, hey, I appeared to be in one piece so I went to work!

When I got there, I noticed a funny thing happening. The world seemed to be in a kind of shutter mode. Everytime I moved my head, I felt like I was a 35mm camera with a motor drive. The world seemed to be a series of stills that kind of moved like the world should but not quite. Since the world seemed to lag behind what it normally should, I figured that driving wasn't such a hot idea.

I called my wife and, after having to listen to several minutes of guffawing (she loves my pain. It's what I give her for Christmas) while keeping my head perfectly still, she took mercy on me and came to take me to my doctor. After enduring several more minutes of guffawing from him (He enjoys my pain, too, but that's because it makes his boat payment), he diagnosed a concusion. "Go home. Rest. And don't go smacking your head on the ground anymore," was all the advice he gave me.

But I knew... I knew... that the best advice was to never trust my right hand again! I keep watching it all the time and every once in a while I can see it trying to sneak off...t g t s w... Hey! Come back here! I need those letters...you Benedict Arnold