My wife and I riding through a neighborhood when she stops at a yard sell. I stop to turn around. An old truck coming in the other direction and I forget to unclip. Fall in the street (felt like slow motion).
Everyone at the yard sell sees me. Then the truck stops beside me and the driver gives me a big drunk toothless grin and says (need to learn to ride that thing)

I was trying to take my dog for a walk while riding my bike. First time trying this. Dog was terrified of bike. Dog violently pulled away from bike. Unable to unclip in time before my dog dragged me and the bike to the ground to enjoy a nice pavement sandwich. Man walking his dog barely stiffled laughter while asking if I was ok. I punched him and kicked his dog (or I mumbled yes while staring at the ground and quickly limped away).

Just riding, minding my own business and a car antenna caught my shorts and underpants and ripped them off completely as it pulled me off my bike. I look up to find both ex-wives, my old babysitter and my grandmother looking at me. Then a dog walked over and peed me. If that weren't bad enough, I was riding home from a polar bear plunge.

As an adult, I have two that are pretty embarrassing.

One was during a charity ride. I did not stop at the previous rest stop, and had to pee really bad. So, I pull into the parking lot, making a too-fast bee-line for the row of portable facilities at the back of the parking lot. About half-way through the parking lot, this guy was telling a story to a bunch of other snacking riders, and takes 4-5 big steps backwards into the parking lot waving his arms and yelling something, right in front of me. When I turned to avoid him, I did a classic face-plant in the loose gravel. Over 30 people laughed their asses off, as I quckly waved them all off, picked up my bike, and sprinted to the rest of the way to the potty.

I also hit a mule deer on my bicycle. I was coming down this foothill road at about 36 mph, when 3 femal mule deer ran out right in front of me from behind some willow bushes/trees. I was going about 32 mph when I hit the middle one. The deer took all of the impact, and I walked away with very minor scrapes, and the need for a whole new front-end for my bike. While I did not think that it was funny or embarrassing at the time, most people find the idea of hitting a deer on a bicycle very humorous, because they consider it almost impossible to do. But that's me. I joust deer on my bicycle.

i wiped out on some black ice on christmas eve headed to work for a half day...it scared the crap out of me, i was rushing to a friends house to feed his cats then i had to go to work...my bars were bent just a bit but nothing else was damaged...i was riding my sturdy all steel singlspeed

My first post wasn't real, obviously, then I remembered this which was actually embarrassing. I was riding in college after getting a "to go" bag of food from the cafeteria to take home. Being the cafeteria, there were a lot of people nearby. I hopped on my bike and I'm feeling pretty cool, cuz I've got my iPod, which weren't so ubiquitous at the time, and I've got my food and I'm cocky anyway because I'm an idiot and I start pedaling. It was really cold out, but I didn't realize it was cold enough for ice. I didn't get more than like 5 cranks into the ride when my bike just completely kicks out from underneath me. Both tires just pushed out and gravity went nuts on me. Reacting to the fall, I launched my bag of food across the street into a field and threw my Ipod onto the path and I hit...hard. I looked around in a considerable amount of confusion because my food was nowhere in sight and I knew I was holding it like 2 seconds ago..also I was on the ground. I had no idea what happened, all I knew is that my food was gone, the iPod was far away and my bike was pissed at me.

This is 10 years ago now (gasp!) but still my finest numbskull moment.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...199&highlight=

Unless you every time I forget what bike I'm riding and try to twist out of toe clips at a stoplight. So much for panache.

You're kidding?!? Really? Who knew...

Today. I don't want to talk about it. All I'm going to say is "construction site mud". Jeeze, I thought it would have dried out by now.

About 3 weeks ago, there were 2 really good looking young women walking on the sidewalk in a development I ride through. I was coming to a stop sign and was busy checking them out. I came to a complete stop and then I realized I forgot to unclip. I fell over pretty hard, then I turned around and they were laughing. I was in a little bit of pain but I got up as quick as I could and got out of there as quick as I could. I stopped a mile or so away to pick the stones out of my bleeding leg and elbow.

There's a common theme of babes and Freds here!

I was cycling down a market street in France clipped in. I slowed down/stopped for a second and fell to my left with both feet clipped in ... into a pregnant lady . I only really brushed her elbow but I was so mortified and her boyfriend was so pissed off that it put me off SPDs for years!

New to commuting, I pulled the brakes too hard and face planted in my driveway.

Once, in a crossroad near my home, I see green ligth, start to ride and.... wham!!! Front wheel get caught in a 10cm step that bike lane had, I passed over my bike and landed front of several ashtonished pedestrians and drivers.

Falling down trackstanding on an aintersection always entertaining for everybody ... but me.

The thing about all these post is not that crashes happen because of hot chicks... Guys on bikes crash all the time, no big deal. The question for this post is "What is the most EMBARRASSING crash" (my emphasis) So men are just more likely to feel the ego pinch when a hotty sees us make an ass of our selves! I rule!

When I was 18 there was a busy two-lane road that I often traveled on my way to another nearby city. At one point some railroad tracks crossed the road at an angle, right in the middle of a curve. This meant that there was a short section where the tracks ran nearly parallel to the road, making it impossible to cross them at anything approaching a right angle (unless you wanted to run across the road straight into the oncoming traffic).

One day I was sailing along at a pretty good clip when I came to that curve. The smart thing would have been to slow way, way down, or even walk the bike across the tracks. But I had ridden over them many times in the past and gotten complacent. You can guess what happened next. The front wheel dropped into the slot in the pavement next to one of the tracks and down I went, into the roadway. The car behind me couldn't swerve around me because there wasn't enough shoulder on the right and there was too much oncoming traffic on the left, so the driver had to slam on his brakes. I was lying on my left side, the bike between my legs, still clipped in, listening to screeching tires and wondering if I was going to be run over.

He stopped in time, which was good because there was no way I could get up for several minutes. My left elbow had taken most of the force of the fall and my whole left arm was in agony. I couldn't use it to push myself up off the ground so I had to sort of slither out from under the bike and roll over to use my right arm to get up. The concerned driver wanted to take me to a hospital, but I just wanted to get out of there with what was left of my pride and go home. Surprisingly, the only damage to the bike I could see was some shredded handlebar tape and the bars themselves were no longer facing the same way as the (undamaged) front wheel. I stood with the wheel between my legs and yanked with my good arm until the bars and the wheel were more-or-less aligned properly and then I rode home. My left elbow was locked tight with my arm bent upward across my chest, so I had to ride home about ten miles with just my right hand to steer and operate one brake.

This accident actually led to another embarrassing moment: The doctor told me to keep my left arm in a sling for a couple of weeks until the elbow was completely healed. I took it out of the sling a few days early, and that very day I absent-mindedly leaned on that arm as I was climbing into a friend's van. My arm buckled under me and I fell face-first into the van (in front of everyone, of course); my elbow locked up again and I had to spend another two weeks in that sling.

Newbie on the clipless about 8 yrs ago.

Feeling quite fine and confident about them (old Looks) - riding at night from a friend's house on a hot summer night ---- pulled up quietly behind a car at a stoplight - and couldn't unclip. Fell over onto the curb, let out a might F-Bomb -

I had two guys get out of the car - look down at me and laugh - they helped me up but told me that I totally surprised them cause all they heard behind their car was the F-Bomb.



Ahh, that learning curve

Just after midnight Friday I posted about an embarrassing crash I had over 30 years ago. If I'd just waited a few hours, I could have posted about a much more recent (and more embarrassing) crash.

I'm just getting back into riding after being away from it for about 20 years (I'm 53). Saturday morning I went to take a look at a vintage Univega that was listed on craigslist. It looked like just what I wanted, so I took it for a test ride, without bothering to adjust the too-high-for-me seat. It was only a short ride, so why bother, right? Stupid, stupid.

I got a few houses up the street and wiped out. It wasn't anything dramatic; just stopped, tried to turn around, and fell over. I couldn't reach the ground with my foot, so I reached it with my shoulder, arm and leg instead. Immediately I heard voices asking, "Are you all right?" It's then I discovered that I had managed to crash right in front of the only house on the entire street (other than the bike owner's house) where anyone was outside. The whole family was sitting in the front yard in lawn chairs facing me. All that was needed was to complete the illusion of spectators at a show.

So I jumped up, said I was fine, checked the bike for damage (there wasn't any), mumbled something about not being on a bike for years, and finished my test ride. I bought the bike, but a visit to the doctor that afternoon confirmed that I had broken the head of the radius bone in my left elbow (the same elbow I injured in that other crash in my teens), so I won't be riding my new bike again for awhile.

The best part? Just before starting the test ride, I told the bike's owner, "Hope I don't embarrass myself."