I've never heard that, that's scary. I have to admit, I've ridden a lot of frames and done serious time on a few and nothing compares to my now forkless System 6. I had an aluminum custom Simonetti Sprinters frame and it was amazing. Before my system 6 I had a Six13 carbon/aluminum. Carbon down and top tubes, and aluminum rear end (which I tore apart) and that was cool. But, when I got by system 6 as a replacement for the six13 I broke. The difference in ride quality was like day and night. I'd never been on a bike that feels like this. It's like the bike has a motor. It just bursts forward with power. I've also ridden every type of mountain bike you can imagine. And had at least 20k miles on the Simonetti before I broke it, and 7K on the six13. Nothing comes close to how the CF fork/frame act.

I don't have first hand experience but I know a few people who use those and they've always complained about how susceptible they are to cross winds. I even saw one guy in front of me wobble much more than me when a really hard gust hit us. I guess the flat spokes act like a wall especially against cross winds.

I've never experienced cross wind issues. Though my route works out such that I don't have many.
Going home I cut over on Bowers to Central Roll up Central (head wind) and go from Shoreline over to footfill at edith (not much wind/head wind on almond). Then up foot hill and Alameda is a headwind.
I guess I'm lucky.

Sorry to hear about your new ride. At least you're okay!

I was literally knocked off my bike last year when the Santa Anas were blowing hard too. I went around a corner and the wind hit me like someone ran and pushed me. Nothing broke for me except for that some people on campus saw me fall, broken ego.... hahaha

Thanks, I'll pass on the sorrow to the next of kin.
You didn't break it right? You just bruised it? It's a lot harder to heal a broken ego. Were you trail riding? Where were you when the Santa Ana's hit you?

Cool, then if we compare the Garmin to Google Earth, we can determine the airborne altitude you obtained.

I looked at my Garmin, I was going 25 then 0 really quick then a little bump of speed. Then there is a HR spike from AdrenalinAnd I just checked and there is a tiny bump from bouncing . Heh.

im sorry man, but it looks like youre not too bad off, as far as the body goes...the wallet being another story all together.

235lb guy is right. over on the clydesdale forum, we dont hear of this happening too often and by often i mean never, if you get my drift.

Quadzilla, I'd forward this story to C'dale.
Forks aren't supposed to break like that.
They might surprise you with a new front end, you never know.
Those forks only cost 15 cents to manufacture, right?

I would hope C'dale would not even think twice about replacing a fork with only 500 miles on it.

The shop said Cracknfail may claim it's a repair replacement and try to recover the cost of the fork =( That would make me very sad.

So I guess that CF riders aren't big on doing bunny hops.

I am glad you're ok and hope for a quick recovery for you and your bike.

That said, this is why I love the feel of steel. I've said it once and wil keep saying it. What would you rather sit your ass or ride on? A material that has been around for 2,000+ years or a material that, in this case, has been around for barely 25 years? Had this been a chro-moly fork this likely would not have happened.

^I broke a chromoly fork rolling off a curb at speed. The legs both failed under the crown and it folded forward on thin tabs of metal until the tire rubbed against the pivot bolt of the brake. I quickly ground to a halt. I stepped off the bike and pushed the wheel back down for fun. That's when the whole business broke off and fell on the grass. Bad, yet not sinister.

I do still swear by steel, mind you. But I tell people to be careful around Mexican Benottos.

yep, a steel fork would have bent backwards until the wheel hit the downtube, then buckled. It happened to my GF's long haul trucker. Even those bikes aren't invincible.

+1

The winds were in excess of 70mph at the FC508 this year and I haven't heard reports of anyone lifted off the ground like a cow in a tornado.

Its been hella windy around here for the past few days for sure. I had an awesome tail wind this morning, but nothing airborne.

If I hadn't been involved... I'd probably call bull**** too. However, after looking at that other c-dale fork failure that looks exactly like mine I'm wondering if I have the order of events right. I can't rule out the damn thing just failed and in the process I experienced what seemed like being lifted up.I still think the wind took me, but it happened too fast. On a side note a woman driving saw me crash and saw the same thing I experienced, me being lifted up and smacked down.

I see what you did there

Anything can fail. But you'll find many more examples of what happened to the OP.

Since the snap is clean, I'm guessing this was a straight forward breakage with the trailing edge severing last. The straightening of the blades as they snapped could have felt like a slight vaulting motion, but I doubt it was the wind picking you up.
Glad you're OK. I've only seen one other CF fork failure similar to this in person (and it wasn't on a C'dale). Blades were snapped clean right around the midpoint of their length, and the rider wasn't a very big guy.

I think this means you need to start hitting the Twinkees and bulk up a bit. Some extra weight should keep you on the ground.

My personal experience of it was riding along all la-de-dah. Then feeling weightless for a moment which was startling and then chest in the ground and sliding and worrying about my arms and legs. Then i remember a moment of crawling to the sideawalk using the curb to get up and standing in the middle of the road over my bike startled for a while. The first moment when things weren't right really seemed like I was lifted up.

Any chance you could have hit a pothole and became too befuddled by the wreck to
see the pothole after the fact?

Jerry