Biker395 

This is inspired by my drive this morning.

State Route 107. A road that is FOUR lanes in both directions. The street has some lights, but there is a lot of visual chaff. The speed limit is 35, but speeds of 45+ are common. It's 5AM and of course, it's dark.

And here is a guy, riding his bike ... going the wrong way.

No light. No reflector. Dark clothes. Virtually invisible! And going the wrong way on a street most motorists treat like a freeway. On top of that, there's NO shoulder and the curb is high ... bailing out was not an option. Oh, no helmet either ... not that it would matter.

Hey, I'm used to seeing some pretty stupid stuff. I commute along the beach, and I'm used to seeing helmetless people flip-flopping a beach cruiser the wrong way down the street while texting ... even at night. But at least they're doing it on a street where motorists kind of expect that. Not so on Hawthorne Boulevard.

I dunno if this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen done on a bike, but it's up there. As this is the 50+ forum and you all have been around to see a lot, I'm sure someone else can do better. So what's the stupidest thing you've ever seen done on a bike?

PS: I was careful to state that this is the "Stupidest Thing You've Ever Seen Done on a Bike" ... so to all my friends out there ... "you" is not a grammatically correct answer.

jdon

Me. Head down testing out a speedometer on a friends bike. Flying down a lane, seeing 36 mph and coming to an abrupt stop against a neighbors Continental. I was 16 at the time. Learned a lot that day.

Boudicca

I rather disliked the guy I saw riding no-handed (and without a helmet) and talking on a cellphone while riding on a busy MUP with a child in a child seat on the back. Feel free to Darwin Award yourself for stupidity, but please don't do it with your kid on the back.

I seriously thought of stopping the two bicycle cops I saw a few minutes later and asking them to read him the riot act, but decided it wasn't my business to interfere. Did I do right?

Biker395 

Lol ... back in the day when speedometers were mechanical and didn't have a "max speed", eh?

jdon

The cops probably wouldn't have done much. Give him a shout out next time. How was your trip?

jdon

Yeah, didn't have one on my bike so the novelty factor was high.

Dudelsack 

I dunno. So many stupid things. So little time.

My favorite also involves a Tombay (oh no, clique talk. Sorry).

When I just had installed clipless pedals, I communted from my house to a gym about 6 miles away at 6 AM. I saw this old coot (someone who was my age now) walking in the gym doors, so I thought it would be cool to charge him, go into a power skid, and scare the crap out of him.

I don't know why we do these things.

Anyway, as I skidded to a stop, I forgot I was clipped in, and I went down. Hard. Ouch.

The "old coot" probably still gets a chuckle out of that incident. I certainly do.

JerrySTL

Guy walking a dog on a lease while riding a bike. Add one squirrel. You can guess the rest.

jdon

Karma bites!

jdon

Had he owned the dog, that wouldn't have happened.

CommuteCommando

Girl in flip flops on beach cruiser salmoning towards me through an intersection where I was turning right at a light in my car. She was racing a yellow too.

Biker395 

^ Lol.

Yea, I'll admit. When I first saw the use of the word "Tombay" on this forum, I was subjected to the injustice of having to search the forum to figure out what that meant. FWIW, it was worth it. The word is now in my lexicon.

I've not given my Tombay story, so here goes.

Just bought some new cycling shoes. This is in the Biker395 dark ages before I got a torque wrench, so I was concerned not to overtorque the screws holding the cleat into the shoe. I dunno ... they looked kinda fragile.

So I attached the cleats to the point where they were what I thought was good and tight, and took off on my inaugural ride.

There are a lot of stop signs in my neighborhood, and a disproportionate number of them are disposed at the top of a slope. And I'm one of those fools that actually stops at stop signs. So I get to the top of this very short, 10% hill, stop at the stop sign, and try to clip out on the left side ...

... and realize that the cleats were not tight enough. My shoe twisted all right ... but the cleat stayed firmly where it was. And I realized there was no way I was getting my cleats out of those pedals. No way. No how.

And in the instant it took for this epiphany, I was already heading downhill backwards.

At moments like that, instinct takes over. And being a skier, my instinct is to turn the bike perpendicular to the slope. That worked fine, but the momentum swung me around on the downhill side and slammed me to the ground.

Ooof.

That was bad enough. But there was still the problem of getting out of the pedals. The only way I could think of doing it was to take the bloody shoes off. I just finished doing that when I noticed I had an audience ... a couple of cars stopped at the same intersection.

With my feet out of them, I was able to twist the shoes enough to get the cleats to release. That saved me an inglorious walk home in my socks with the shoes dangling from my pedals.

Trust me. I've not undertorqued a cleat since.

CommuteCommando

I had a dog and had to "walk" him on a bike. On a leash, and with me on foot, he would just pull and pull. That dog had to run. It was hard at first, but dogs can be trained for it.

On the other hand I have seen guys "walking" dogs with a bike where they were having to pull the dog along. Tha isn't just stupid, it's cruel.

Connell

OK, I'll add some of my own.

12 years old, pedaling away from the house looking down at my feet and wondering "Should I go back and put on my other shoes - they look cooler than these ones". Straight into the back of a neighbor's parked car. It bent my forks way back and as the repair cost was an astronomical sum of GBP 4.50, my parents made me save for it out of my (50p per week) pocket money. It was one of those rare events, a beautiful British summer and my friends were out on their bikes every day of the school holidays. Not me. Finally had the right amount of money just as school started up again.

Fast forward a few years, a friend and I rode Lands End to John O' Groats (far southwest of England to the far northeast of Scotland), youth-hosteling it along the way. Day 1 required us to spend most of the day on the train from the north country down to Penzance near the southwest tip. From there we had a quick 10 mile ride to Lands End for the photo then back to Penzance before starting the trip proper the next day. 20 miles? No bother, we'll just knock that out after dinner.

Except we forgot that it gets dark earlier in the south than in the north where we lived and by the time we turned around, the last of the daylight had gone. And neither of us had lights on our bikes. 10 miles doesn't seem all that far on a map but these were twisting, narrow, shoulderless and disturbingly busy country roads. I was dressed in black on a black bike. My friend in navy blue. One driver made a point of stopping to yell at us and I think it was because we'd really frightened him. We both had a brandy in the pub when we finally made it back to the hostel.

OK, one more. A group of friends and I decided to race the last 5 miles back to town to try and catch the chip shop before it closed. Astonishingly, I left them all in the dust. Man, I was cruising. Way out in the lead with my head down I crossed an intersection and hit the central median straight on. I remember the feeling of frustration that my brakes didn't appear to work. My friend Pete, in second place explained this would have been because my wheels were some eighteen inches off the ground. No bones broken but the resulting abrasions meant I couldn't ride my bike for weeks. Yes, alcohol may have been a factor in this one.

These were all many years ago but I can't honestly say that age has brought much of this wisdom I keep hearing about.

Biker395 

^ And well written too!

Just want to point something out here. An awful lot of the stories are tales of self-stupidity ... me thinks that's the kind of perspective that makes the 50+ thread different than the others.

Boudicca

Trip was lovely thank you.

Cold at night though.

Cyclist0094

Stupidist was when I was 18 and bought a bike thinking the cute chick who worked in the bike shop downstairs from my apartment would date me if I rode.

In 1976 I lived in Atlanta, I had saved up about $600 bucks between a tax return and working the summer knocking on doors for Jimmy Carter's Presidential Campaign to buy a car. I saw this really hot girl working in the bike shop, I was smitten. So I spent the $600 car money for a used silver 1974 Condor with Nuovo Record and sewups , Bell wool shorts ,jersey and Campy hat. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. But I started riding and pretty soon I was up to doing 25-30 mile rides and hanging out at the bike shop with every excuse I could come up with. The cheapest item in the shop was the jar of leather toe straps on the counter selling for $1 each. I probably owned 50 toe straps.

I had been riding about 6 weeks and one day at the shop she was talking about an upcoming club ride she was going to be on. I looked at the local bike club's news letter and saw they had a ride that coming Sunday starting about 20 miles away. So Sunday morning I got up early and rode the 20+ miles to the ride start. I sign up but I don't see her around anywhere and then was told that a small group of cyclists had just started. I get on my bike and I sped towards the earlier group. I catch up to them a few miles down the road and recognize her Guerciotti. I ride up beside her to say hi and she is astonished. She says " I didn't expect to see you on a century ride!" I said something about it sounding like a nice ride and then I asked "How long is a Century?" The whole group nearly crashed with laughter. Finally someone told me it was a 100 miles. I tried to play cool like it wasn't a big deal and vowed to finish the ride( I was dying inside).

I managed to hang with them untill the first rest stop at 25 miles. At that point I had already ridden more that day than I ever had and I still had 75 miles to go. I dropped back and rode with a slower group to the 50 mile mark, I was really hurting by then. I slowed down a lot after that and by 75 miles I had long been dropped off the back and the rest stop people had packed up and left. I was out of water and feeling really bad, It being Sunday afternoon in rural Ga everything was closed. A couple more miles down the road I came upon a Moose-Lodge that was open. I stumbled in(I could barely walk) to ask for water and after I got the usual redneck treatment they begrudgingly filled up my two bottles for $2. The only food they had was peanuts and fried pork rinds so for another $2 I stuffed my jersey pockets with that and left. Peanuts and Pork Rinds must be a energy food because not long after eating I started feeling pretty good again and picked up the pace a bit and got back to the start/finish almost 9 hours after I started. My plan was to bum a ride back to Midtown Atlanta but everyone was long gone. So the only way home was to ride the 20 miles. I think it took me 3 hours to ride the 20 miles. 140 miles total. I finally got into bed about 10 pm and stayed there for two days.

As for the girl I found out not long after that she was gay. We became good friends and riding buddies for a number of years.

Boudicca

Interestingly, the question was stupidest thing you've seen done on a bike, implying it was not you that did it, and almost all the replies are of the mea culpa variety.

What does this tell me about the 50+ forum. We can't follow instructions, or we don't mind admitting it when we make fools of ourselves.

Biker395 

Yup ... at this point, I think we're almost proud of making fools of ourselves.

CenturionIM

I have done that. It is okay if you just hold the leash in your hand and let go if the dog sees a squirrel.

It was kinda cool, letting the dog haul you and the bike. Until picking up the leash got tiring. Too many damn squirrels.

JohnDThompson 

But lived to tell the tale!

loky1179

No need to let go of the leash - you just need to balance the weight of the bike and the weight of the dog. A 50lb black lab requires that you be riding a 50lb Schwinn Typhoon with coaster brakes. It is amazing the kind of acceleration that is possible with this setup.

loky1179

Stupidest thing - in high school. When riding together a "friend" of mine asked me to look at his back wheel to see where it was rubbing. It didn't look to me like it was rubbing, but he said to look closer. So, I look closer - and that is when I ran into the parked car - which is exactly what my "friend" was trying to get me to do. Fortunately, I was going less than 10 mph, not 36 mph like the poster above.

cranky old dude

I actually heard the squeeking drivetrain before I noticed the cylist!!

Beyond that I figure this picture speaks for itself.

NOS88

I think in the top three was seeing me hit the deck pretty hard because I thought I could straighten my slightly outward leaning right brifter, after switching handlebars, by giving it a quick sharp tap. Problem was I was moving along at about 18 to 20 mph. It is simply amazing how quickly a bike stops when the front wheel suddenly goes more than 90 degrees to the left in less than a second, but perhaps not as amazing as that I’ve somehow managed to live this long.