What's the stupidest thing you've ever done while cycling? I once smashed into the back of a parked car and chipped three front teeth. Now that was dumb. I think that takes some beating.

Strangely, it was only my teeth that suffered any injury in that incident. I really have no idea why.

I was in a hurry to get to my club to teach on time, and I wasn't thinking and sat up on my bike without looking and crashed right into a parked car on the side of the road. Funny thing, I forgot I was riding my bike, I was so comfortable with riding. Of course, none of the cars whizzing by offered to help me up... how stupid was I to do that?

oh, baby ...

back in college, I was late one morning to finish a take-home exam, and I was barrelling down this really narrow street. I thought to myself, "Gee, this is a narrow, busy street. maybe it'll be safer on the sidewalk!"

short version: compression fracture of my 12th thoracic vertebra.

longer version: this car pulls out of her driveway and pauses to check for traffic. I slam on the brakes and endo through the air, bounce on my head and slam back-first into her left front quarter panel. a few inches higher and I'dve been folded in half, backwards. as it was, I thought I could walk it off, but it just hurt more and more, until my friend Tola (who went on to Duke Medical School) dragged me to the hospital.

now, picture me still doing that thing Chris Farley used to do on his SNL "Chris Farley Show" sketches, pounding my own forehead and yelling to myself STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID!!! my back still isn't the same.

-a.

Back in the day, I was really drunk. I decided to ride back home on a bicycle. All I remember is that I was going down the street. Someone pulled up behind me and honked. When I turned my head to see what was going on, the handlebars turned with and I went right over the handlebars.

The person honking was a friend of mine. She said that she saw me swerving on the bike and thought it would be best if she drove me and the bike back to my place. I agreed.

Then, when we got back to my place, she offered to carry the bike inside and dress my scrapes. I declined. Then, as I was walking the bike back in, I tripped and fell on the bike.

Most absent minded would have been the ubiquitous run-in with a parked car while looking backwards when I was about 15. Bent the fork and rim but the car was fine. I've been damaged goods ever since.

Dumbest thing was adjusting a threadless headset/stem -- actually, trying to get rid of a creak --while riding the bike. After loosening the headset tension screw and the upper stem bolt, but before I loosened the lower stem bolt I realized what I was about to do... I went back home. Put the bike away and proceeded to make margarita's since I realized I had no business being on a bike that particular day.

Dumbest thing to bystanders was bump-practice on the football field with a cycling club... you know, where you intentionally overlap wheels, bump tires, crash, throw elbows, learn how to "move" other cyclists and otherwise learn the fine points about cycling as a contact sport.

Riding at full speed around a gate and into a barbed wire fence which blended perfectly with the background.

Have some really cool scars to show for that one.

Falling asleep while riding to work when I was 16.

My front wheel clipped the curb and I woke up suddenly with one arm and one leg each side of a street light pole. THUD.

I then fell backwards - got up - dusted myself down - got back on the bike and rode to work now very awake.

I was working as an apprentice chef and was on my way to do the breakfast shift at some unearthly hour.

Pulling a wheelie on my new much lighter mountain bike and landing it on my back on asphalt....didn't just bruise the ego it left a nice scar.

I gave up aspirations of doing cool wheelies after a back injury that took me out for a month. Did a similar stunt, popped the front wheel up and litterally did a flip all the way over. OUCH!

When I was younger a friend and I thought it would be cool if we tied a rope to the back of his motorcycle, and tied the other end to my bicycle. He took off down the road pulling me on my bike, and all was good and fun until my bike fell over and he didn't know I was being dragged down the road at 20 MPH. It was hard explaining to my mom why all the skin on my chin and forearms was missing.

OUCH!!!!

So I'm not the only person to have done something like this... However, I didn't see the gate and ran right into it. I did miss the barbed-wire fence though.

About 12 years ago, I was on a night ride with this girl along an unlit trail (save for my meager Cateye 5W headlamp) that led around Fermi National Accelerator Labs in Batavia, IL where we both worked as college interns. She mentioned something about being able to see the stars (a rarity for the burbs of Chicago) and I started staring up and stargazing. By the time I heard her yell "look out!", the big 4" diameter roadblock/gate was upon me. It was just at handlerbar height. I didn't even have time to hit the brakes. I was doing maybe 16MPH. The bike came to a complete stop. I however, did not.

I went sailing over the bars (both my bike's and the gate's) and plunged headfirst onto the hard gravel. Luckily, my helmet did its job and absorbed the impact while leaving me with a bit of a headache. My date was both amused and concerned. And I guess I sorta soaked it up... Hey, sympathy attention is better than none.

The bike came out relatively unscathed (some scratches on the brake levers and barends) but it took us both a good 45 minutes to locate my bike computer which had ejected itself into the bushes.

Since then, I've learned that no matter how pretty the girl or the scenery is one should always remain aware of what's directly ahead of them.

5 minutes to find the computer - the next 40 russling around in the bushes together just for fun.

Arriving home from work in the wee small hours ( our house is the last on a long driveway) with the front L.E.D on scan & finding out the hard way that the wife has shut the previousaly always open gates to keep out a wandering dog

when I was 12 my friends and I built a large ramp to jump the huge ditch that was in front of my friends' house. After a couple of tries and success I wanted to get some "Big air" so I started my run at the top of a large hill. Needless to say I had way too much speed. At the last second I chose the ramp over the ditch and flew SMACK into my friends's house. His house had that glass stucco stuff on the walls. It was messy!

Here's mine. One day after finishing a training ride with my triathlon partner, Joe we were riding back to his house doing our cool down. We saw some nice looking girls up walking towards us and as soon as we got within a few feet of them I decided to pop a wheelie and proceeded to flip the bike. This happened on my old Peugot that had a set of the original Scott DH-aero bars on them and I was clipped in with look pedals. Boy did I feel like a dork! Joe never let me live that one down either

Zack

Many years ago when I was a youngster I was very good at popping and riding wheelies.

One day I was riding home and saw a group of girls. I popped a wheelie and was riding it, showing out for the ladies, being cool, and the next I thing I know is, I am waking up several minutes later on the couch of one of the young ladies.

Seems the front wheel exited the bike while I was riding my wheely, you can probably visualize the rest. I don't remember anything but seeing the girls and popping the wheely. Nice wounds, lots of TLC.

The things I do for women.

When I was about 16 riding a racing 10 speed, with clips and straps, I saw some friends ahead. They were sytanding talking near a chain link fence so I pulled up on the bike, and to steady myself (rather than unclip) I grabbed the fence.

For some stupid reason (there were girls there) I grabbed it while I was still moving.

result- I got yanked off the saddle, and landed first on my back wheel (ouch!) and then on the ground, with one leg now yanked out of my cycling shoe.

I felt like such an ass, and my friend nearly asphyxiated on his coca cola.

When I was younger and riding my BMX bike, someone mentioned that my chain looked loose while I was riding. I reached down to test the tension with my fingers and rather than freewheel back to move the right pedal, I pedaled forward. Unfortunately, I had not released my grip on the chain so two of my fingers went between the chain and sprocket. I suffered giant punctures through both of my fingers/fingernails - they were mangled for weeks. That hurt bad!

backwhen I was young and dumb
(as opposed to. . . ) I was being ridden on the spring
type book rack on the front of a friends bike.
He jumped a curb and it let go from the frame.
Being attached to the front axle it promptly
succumbed to gravity and dumped me
ignominiously on the pavement where I learned
an abject lesson on skidding down the the tarmac
on ones chin while your buddy tries in vain to keep
from riding up your back. . .
the resultant stitches were fun too

Marty

I have two, my friend and I were riding home from the arcade a long time ago (back when Donkey Kong was getting it's start and Mario did not have a brother or any other cute little friends). It was night and we didn't have any lights on our bikes. I am following at a safe distance behind my friend when suddenly he starts flying! His bike kept going and he was hangin in the air and then he dropped. Turns out he ran into a guy wire off a telephone pole that sloped up out of' the ground. I was trying so hard not to laugh but it was pretty funny. He turned out to be OK luckily.

My stupid thing was doing a wheely without having properly tightened the front wheel. I rode the wheelie for about 15 feet and then Gravity took over as I watched my front wheel role into a neighbor's yard. I then learned why BMX bikes have all those pads on them. Luckily the handlebars caught me in the chest and not the neck.

When I was about twelve, we had a huge pile of sawdust we were using for the orchard. We were riding our bikes down the slope that led up to it, achieving plenty of speed and hoping to get some air as we crested the top. I got a brilliant idea and dug a big pit at the top, piling up the fill on the slope side to form a ramp. I laid some boards to make a firm runway, hoping to jump the pit (like Max the bike kid from that old Disney movie). Unfortunately, not having ever been introduced to bmx, I didn't know anything about jumping. My front wheel went straight down into the hole. I did a complete flip and landed on my butt in the soft sawdust (incredible thrill). I think the bike did two flips and all 37 pounds of Huffy land right in front of me. I'd wear a helmet if I tried it again!

When I was about twelve my freind and I were riding down the road at a pretty good pace on our 10-speeds. All of a sudden my rear brake lever falls off the handlebars. It swings down and hits the spokes. The spokes flipped it back out and then it swings back toward the spokes again. Thinking quickly, I stick my right foot up to keep it from going into the spokes. I catch the cable with my ankle and the lever goes in anyway. The cable sucked my foot into the spokes. Then my shin hits the back of the fork and the rest of me goes over the bars. I slid across two lanes of pavement and into the dirt on the other side. I took out about a third of the spokes with my leg. OUCH!!

I hit the opposite of that kind of obstacle. When I was growing up, there was a large undeveloped lot behind our house with a big tree-covered hill. My friends and I used to ride up that hill on our Huffy bikes and come screaming down the side of it. We eventually wore a nice path through the shrubbery which only allowed us to go faster. However, you couldn't see what was at the bottom of the hill until you broke free into the clearing. It had never been a problem before... the runout was nice and smooth.

One day, I was coming down at a speed that in hindsight was much greater than was recommended for the "limited sight distance". As soon as I broke out into the clearing I realised that smack dab in the middle of my runout, someone had placed a very large MOUND OF DIRT... probably from the commercial construction that was going on in the adjoining lot.

I pulled the front end up and both the bike and I went ballistic as we went up the slope of the mound. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. It was as if I was suspended in mid-air for a while. Then I was inverted. I kicked away from the bike and launched myself downwards right on top of the mound of dirt. I was then looking up to see the bike tumbling end over end above me and falling STRAIGHT DOWN. I managed to roll away just as the handlebars slammed into the ground where I would have been laying.

I just did this one two weeks ago, I built a new fixed gear, and had forgotten to pinch the chain closed, stood on the pedal to swing the leg over and snap. I was really embarassed, cause it was in front of work.