I don't guess I've had any embarrassing crashes, had some "oops" moments where I didn't crash, though.

But a general observation: There's no smart way to hurt yourself. You never hurt yourself and say "Golly, that was clever!" So almost by definition, a crash is going to be embarrassing. More important is whether you live or are injured. Pride is easy to wound, but easy to heal, too.

On November 14, 2006 I was riding behind my stepson on the Rivrtrail. He wiped out on a pile of wet leaves on the wooden bridge. To avoid running him over I had to fall off my bike. That wasn't stupid or embarrassing, at least not on my part. It was kind of heroic, actually.

However, exactly one year later, 11-14-07, I was riding alone on that same trail. I was so distracted thinking about the accident a year earlier that I didn't even notice an identical pile of leaves in the same spot on the bridge. Yep, you guessed it. I wiped out on the leaves and slid 10 feet down the trail. I wasn't hurt (much) but it sure was embarrassing when a couple older women ran up to me and asked if I was alright! :o

...Of course he goes straight over into the dead dog/turtle position. Problem is he is clipped in and his hand is stuck in his backpack, on which he is lying. And – according to him anyway – he was still kind of pedalling. One of the following motorists-co-workers got out of his car to rescue him.
This is probably not that funny, but this type of thing always seems to happen to my colleague...

and

I have done exactly this, under exactly the same influence. The car beside me was so freaked out he ran a red light.

LMAO at work, OMG!

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All the stories are making me feel much better (I have company in my dorkitude).

Here's another one. Starting out on my first real ride on a new bike. Put foot on pedal, start to roll but don't fully realize that the new bike is about 15 lbs lighter than the old one. So I basically just pulled the bike and me straight over into a heap on the driveway.

But at least I got the "first scratch in the new paint" moment over right away!

Hey,

I just had a flip-over again! I wanted to look cool and tried to jump over a crete block, but somehow the jump ended with me slamming my front wheel into a slot pothole. The front wheel locked and the rear wheel came over the top. I managed to duck out of the way and the bicycle flew through the space where my body occupied a moment before completing a mini-Indiana-Jones moment.

Geez. Do you guys get into this kinda mishaps?

T

My most embarassing moments on the bike have involved clipless pedals and my inability to either clip in or unclip. I can remember exactly 3 such incidents and they were more than a couple years ago. One was at an intersection, I was waiting to turn left, only there were no cars to trip the light, so I decided to pedal over to the other side of the road and just cross at the cross walk. I took one pedal, tried to clip my other foot in, lost momentum and fell right over (it was slightly uphill). It was a fairly busy intersection so there were maybe 15-20 cars that witnessed my clumsiness. :o

I remember when I first got my new bike. I got Shimano clipless pedals on the new bike - my old bike had Ritchie pedals. On the surface anyways, the Ritchie cleats would fit in the Shimano cleats, so I didn't think much of the difference. I took my new bike out for a spin - hit a steep hill and was having trouble with shifting and ended up having to stop, but I couldn't unclip and tipped over sideways in the grass. Fortunately there weren't any people around to see this...

I swapped the pedals that very evening. My lesson learned was to use the Ritchie cleats with Ritchie pedals, and Shimano cleats wtih Shimano pedals.

I was going about 4 mph talking to my neighbor who was off to my right working on his lawn and rode right into the back of his parked car.