Well, unclipping has been my bane also. Me and some friends were out riding. This particular ride was characterized by loads of clipless falling. My one was the last incident. So, after three of my fellow riders fell victim to the evil clipless, it was my turn. I fell very near the end of the trip ata stoplight.

The embarrassing thing was not the fall itself, but the fact that I had laughed at and criticized those who had already fallen, laughing at their stup...id..ity.

Oh man, that was hard.

One of the guys on my team was riding along at about 20mph and got wrapped up in fiddling with his computer. He ended up rear-ending a parked delivery truck, flew head-first into the back of it and broke his neck. He was the butt of many jokes when he showed up to the next group ride in a neck halo.

While on tour:
After flying to San Diego, picking up my bike at LBS, mounting the panniers and loading them, I went for a short ride and had my first flat tire before getting out of the parking lot.

In west Texas I was following an asphalt road alongside the interstate and the road came to a dead end. There was a short 15 meter gravel connector to get to the interstate to continue on. I hit the gravel at 15mph with loaded panniers and only made it about 10'. Ended up on my back with both feet still clipped in.

Took a short cut across a railroad bridge in Louisiana walking my bike along. There was a train coming.

Departed one morning 2.5 hours before sunrise in pitch dark. If you have never ridden up and down strange hills in complete darkness you may not understand the sensation. I did not have any lights on the bike. Going down at 20+mph, following faint highway lines, wondering what was in the road ahead. Did not crash but sure had the blood pumping.

I have been dropped a couple of times on my daily ride by one MTB rider who is older than I am. If I ever catch him I am going to tell him to get a road bike.

On a regular ride I got sick of being chased by a dog from a particular house, so one day I figured I'd teach it a lesson, cycled up to house, dog barked and came running at me, so I unclipped and took a mighty swing at its head. Missed the dog, lost control and landed on my right with road rash ankle to shoulder and the bike 20 feet up the road. The dog stopped barking and just stood looking at me. First time I've ever felt embarrassed in front of a dog!!!

When I was 35 and doing my first Solvang Century I was passed by an older man with grey hair and beard and I thought I couldn't let this old guy drop me. We diced for miles with him getting away before the first rest stop. Humbled, I rolled into the stop and spotted him seated on the ground with his prosthetic leg off, massaging the end of his leg. A couple years back I was riding in the hills and was heading home pretty tired. I saw a rider up ahead and pushed to catch him. He told me he was a former pro and was about the nicest guy you could meet. He was about 55 but still looked fit. We told bike stories and he kept dropping me on the climbs, but would wait at the top of each hill. I figured I'm tired and he was a pro, then he told me he had lost a lung to cancer some years back. Incredible! I used to carry a Zefal frame fit pump and I knocked it off with my knee in an intersection and parked my bike to walk back and pick it up. A woman waiting at the light going the other way had seen the whole thing and when the light turned green she looked at the pump, looked at me, then just ran it over and sped off.

It's not the dogs fault, it's the morons who own the dog that don't keep it on a leash. Go after the owners, not the dog.

So, you've been dropped by people having only:
1. One leg
2. One lung
Now there's something to tell your grandchildren!

Seriously though, I really don't care if I'm being dropped. I know I'm in pretty poor shape, so I don't feel bad about it. I'm pretty sure your average fit 12-year-old could drop me on an MTB with knobbies. I'm that bad.

A guy in my club is 67 years old, started cycling less than two years ago, after an entire life of inactivity, and he has no trouble keeping up with most of the young guys in the club. In two years time, I know I won't even be close to his performance level, even if I followed the best possible training schedule.

You'd think, then, that I'm the endurance type instead...
WRONG! I suck at that too. My longest distance, so far, was 154 km (96 miles), and the last 30-40 km were covered going veeery slow, and in pure agony. Average speed was a poor 24 km/h (15 mph).

My guess is that 80-90% of the population has greater potential than me, when it comes to cycling.

Bet none of you can beat this: I got dropped by a guy with one leg on Sunday!!!

Guy pedals up next to me tucked down in an aero position on his aero bars and he's spinning away at probably 130rpm when I notice he only has one leg!!! The other below the knee is a carbon fiber/aluminum leg clipped in to his pedal on the right side of his bike. I followed him for a bit (not close enough to draft) but not losing any ground either but after a few minutes I just couldn't keep up the pace and so I let him go. He was not real smooth with the pedaling either which I assume is because of his lack of a calf muscle? I was trying to figure out the mechanics of it while trying to keep up with him.

The guy I rode with was very smooth and was wearing tights, I couldn't tell he had a prosthesis. Then there's Brett Wolfe, amputated at the hip and does 300 mile mountain bike races.

I figured that you could probably train your body to adapt to spinning smoothly. He was spinning really really fast though. Much faster than I spin. He was probably doing 22-23+mph into a 10mph headwind.

I just thought it would be a good story for a laugh.

That reminds me of an amusing anecdote. Just last week I decided to attempt a personal top speed record, my previous one being 54.5 MPH. I climbed my hill (.6 miles long @ 11% grade) in 5:30, also a new personal record, and took a couple minutes at the top to just ride in circles to recover.

Once my heart rate had come back down from 201BPM, I got a running start and plunged over the edge of the drop off, still pedaling furiously. This particular road is two lanes each way, and I passed two cars that were in the lane to my left.

As I started nearing terminal velocity, I noted that the right-hand bend was coming up, so I was going to need to negotiate that, not to mention I was quickly bearing down on a pickup truck, so I'll have to take some action to avoid from hitting him.

Upon review of my computer data, I was traveling 58.0 MPH at this point in time, and much to my chagrin, I developed the death wobble. I've experienced it in the past on this particular bike, but only at speeds half of what I was doing now.

The adrenaline rush made it difficult to remember exactly what I did, but I remember instinctively clenching the handlebars, immediately realizing that this action made the shimmy worse, and loosened my grip. Next I clenched the top tube with my knees, noticibly deadening the shimmy, then started feathering on the rear brake. First thing I noticed was how pitiful the rear brake is at high speed, next I noticed I was getting uncomfortably close to the truck in front of me and I had now better start negotiating the sweeping right turn.

Thankfully, right about that time, the shimmy stopped and I was able to continue on my merry little way as if nothing had happened... except my legs were quivering with adrenaline now.

Great thread! I am glad it was resurrected.

The first time I got on a bike, about 35 years ago at the age of 13 or so, I rode around a bit on a friend's stingray doing pretty well. I decided to bring it up a notch and tried a wheelie. Nobody saw me, so I just went into the house scraped up and let everyone think it was a simple spill for a first time rider... not an idiot trying to be a pro on his furst ride.

A couple of years later, I was riding my 3 speed bike which had no brakes. directly into the side of a moving car as I was delivering newspapers. No damage to me, and the bike was in better shape after the crash because it had some rust scraped off of the handlebars.

We move the calendar forward about 10 years, when I was riding my bike home from the shop where I had just bought it. I was turning into the parking lot of the barracks, and the rear wheel started to slide (I used to love high speed turns, and had no issues with sliding the tire, but I had never ridden a lightweight bike). As soon as the rear tire left the relatively smooth road and hit the rough asphault of the parking lot, I had my first tacoed wheel, less than 10 miles from when I picked up the bike.

A few years later I was riding in Okinawa and was coming off of the base to go home. It had been raining and I hit the metal cover over the binjo ditch and proceeded to slide my bike right over to the side of the road with plenty of witnesses...

Flash forward a another 20 years or so, and I was riding my Sedona on the road, and got to a stop sign. I don't ride clipless (or clips), so this should have been safe, but as I got to the point of stopping, I decided to turn the wheel sharper and get closer to the edge so I could step onto the curb and be more comfortable as I waited for the light to change. I discovered that at low speed with the front wheel turned sharply that it doesn't take too much pressure on the front brake to make you go over the handlebars... sideways.

A couple of years later, I went for a ride after reading in the forums, one thread was specifically talking about the fact that computers can be hazardous for some riders who pay more attention to them than they should while riding. While I read I was scoffing at people who can be that easily distracted, they must be idiots... Well wantiong an accurate mileage after my ride, I looked down and zeroed out my computer. I looked up just in time to realize that a collison with a fence around a dumpster was inevitable... No witnesses, but I had "fence rash" on that ride.

I am looking forward to getting clipless pedals this year, so I am sure I will have a follow-up post!

It is a good story and it makes us realize what people are capable of and makes me feel so "not worthy".

well... for my clipless story... i fell off my bike before i ever got out of my driveway... first bike ride! UGH! (and i had forgotten to put my gloves on.. in my excitement of getting out to ride my new bike! so i hurt the palm of my hands!)

i crashed... right in front of an ambulance! they turned on the lights.... and stopped.. talk about embarrasing... (then.. when they asked if i needed a band-aid i actually asked "oh... do you have one?") NO.. i'm NOT blonde! to add insult to injury... a few minutes later a fire truck stopped to see why the amubulance was stopped with it's lights on!

LOL!

Thanks for sharing!

All these stories are coming back to me now... When I was a kid, I was in the middle of the street and cranked down hard on my BMX bike to start a sprint. I put everything I had into that first stroke... and the freewheel broke. My foot shot straight into the ground, I racked my nuts on the top tube and my chest on the handlebars. If I remember correctly, I think I just laid in the middle of the street for awhile until I was capable of limping home.

Best story so far!

Shortly before I got rid of my Huffy BMX bike for my first "mountain bike" (if you could call it that) I was riding to a friends house a couple blocks away. I was weaving down the street, making large graceful deep turns as I rode. In the middle of one of those turns something happened, that something happened to the chain. The next thing I know the rear wheel is sliding one direction and I'm flying the other. Took most of the skin off the top of my left hand and still wear a few scars from that one.

Before that, on the same bike, riding up the street with a friend of mine running in front of me (BMX bike - riding fairly slow). I'm distracted by someone off to my right, about the same time my friend STOPPED directly in front of me. Ran smack into him, and I took the majority of the damage between the two of us. Worst part a) I tore a hole in my brand new jeans my parents had just got me for my birthday and b) it was right before a big neighborhood party and I was too banged up to enjoy it.

I've had so many flat tires I can change them without getting off my bike.

As I was riding by the ol' swimmin' hole, I was checking out this gal's bike so hard, I missed that fact she was stripping to go swimming.

I could not agree more.

But I would not be so quick to go after this owner as these guys do not take kindly to it (seriously).

Could not resist...

Thing is you are right. There is NO excuse for a dog not being controlled by his owner.

If humbling stories relative to dirt bikes applied here I would run out of room.
... Just remembered.

I was brand new to mtb and clipless. One night I was convinced to get just the right adjustment on my new clipless pedals and got impatient with loosening and tightening the bolt so I (in my infinite wisdom) thought it would be SO MUCH smarter to not quite tighten the bolts on the bottom of my shoes all the way. To make a long story short, we all know what happened. When I went to eject my feet, the clip moved in the pedal and had no intentions of coming out. After finding a nice place to fall over and getting my shoes off, I called it quits for the night.

I have fallen at least six times because I did not unclip - once in my front yard which gave my children no end of mirth.

And, sometimes I have problems clipping in. I have run into sidewalks and other obstacles because I have been looking down, cursing the pedal I cannot get the cleat into.

I too have been dropped by so many women that I don't care anymore.

I oncebonked so bad that I was reduced to lapping water out of spigot in a park.

I sometimes forget to bring a patch kit or a spare tube on long rides. That guarantees that I will have a flat miles from civilization and will be reduced to calling the wife or a friend to come and get me.

I too was once dropped by a guy on mtb.

I am 5'9" and my trainer make my bike about six inches higher. I have had to use a stool to mount up. Getting off is also interesting. It is a good thing I have all the children I want.

I raced my first race with my bike lock in my Camelbak.

I punctured once, miles from home. As I was getting my kit out a passing cyclist shouted:
"Have you got everything you need ?"
I replied:
"Yeah, no worries, you carry on."
A minute later I found my tube of glue had dried up solid.

This story is priceless. Thank you for making me laugh this morning.

Cheers,

Brian