[Jorgemonkey]

I was goin through some old home videos at my house, and I saw a clip of what was probably my most embarrasing moment on a bike. I was going to attempt to jump a drainage ditch (I doubt I would have made it, but it would have been an awsome crash) and I had a friend video tape it with some other friends watching. As I started to pedal, I was in a really hard gear and was standing up to get momentum, my chain snapped and I found myself going OTB. It happened so fast my buddy couldn't figure out what happened (that and he was to busy laughing). Since we were near a pretty big road a few cars that were sitting at the light honked as well, and they were all laughing. So, whats ya'lls most embarrasing moment?

 

[CHUM]

Yelling "Low Branch"!

to my bro and then immediately nailing my head on it, knocking myself goofy, just to come around in time to hit a high root and endo right in front of him.

This happened several months ago and I think he's still laughing.

I also had to replace my helmet - ugh!

 

[Lighty_]

I have too many to count.

 

[richeyr]

When I was about ten we had a trail in a small woods with a dirt ramp at the bottom of a hill. Everyone used to try to out do one another on this ramp. I remember telling everyone watch this one. Next thing I ws pedalling as fast as I could down the hill and lifted as hard as I could... I veered off to the side of the trail and racked myself on a tree about 5 feet in the air. I remember it was the worst pain to date. I remember crying as I hobbled as fast as I could home. It was embarassing as all my friends were there, but the physical pain far exceeded the mental.

 

[VA2SLOride]

I have too many to count.

One that sticks out for me was when I first started riding, and thought I'd be really cool and attempt to tackle a looooong set of staris outside of one of the buildings on my college campus. Sure enough, I lost control, wandered a little too far to the left, and my front wheel ended up getting jammed between a handrail and a concrete wall. Yours truly flew over the bars and into a group of people walking to class. I ended up losing a significant amount of skin on my hands and elbos, stood up, and began to laugh uncontrollably. What else CAN you do in a situation like that?

 

[Homer Simpson]

I thought I had no embarassing moments on a mountain bike, but then I remembered this. I was making a turn in some leaves and slid out. The h-bar hit my crotch area. As I stood up and looked at my bike I looked down and noticed my family jewels looking back at me. Ripped a hole in my shorts right at the long spot. Found some toilet paper to cover the affected area and took the least populated route back to my truck. Rode in a pretty good tuck all the way back to my truck. Damn TP kept moving around, so I had to keep stopping to repostition it and myself.

I'm not really embarassed about this but I took a lot of kidding over it. I was in a cat 4 crit and on about the 4th lap I had good momentum going down the front stretch and shot out of the pack, got to the first corner, turned, and wham. I hit the ground, slid about 20 feet, and then got run over by a team mate. Turns out my tubulars (which I did not glue on myself) both rolled off the rims going into the corner. Worst thing was my booty hanging out my now holy shorts. That was about 12 or 13 years ago and I still occasionally hear about it.

This relates to motocross, a friend borrowed a MX bike to race one weekend, stopped on the way to the track to air up the tires, turns out he put about 70 or 80 psi in each tire, which normally have 16-20 psi for racing. That was in 89' and I still have to remind him every now and then.

 

[mcseforsale]

Karma

First ride of the year about 3 years ago. On the way to the trail at West Hartford Reservoir in Ct. , buddy was in front going through this small rock garden (like 20' of baby heads) and he dabbed. I yell out "You Pu$_y". Just as the "ee" sound came out, I tombstoned and tipped over. Didn't clip out and fell sideways into a pile of rocks. Me=6'1" on a large bike, tipping over, clipped in. I curled my arm up and just took the hit. 3 broken ribs later, we were riding again (yeah, I know, stupid. rode for another 2 hours like this, it was quite painful).

Some guy we didn't know saw the whole show.

About 15 min. later, my buddy got hung up on a log crossing and tipped over the same way.

Same dude was right behind us and got the whole show.

AJ

 

[brado1]

Being Yanked off the bike

was flying on this downhill (Betty Hienous) stretch and there was a fallen tree which i and the bike cleared but the loop on the top of my camelbak hawg snagged a bigass branch . Ripped me back from the bike (hollywood stuntman style) shocked the sh!t out of me. i thought i was clear and wham...the bike kept rollin down the trail... about 25 30 ft... Now i slow down on low hangers!

 

[applegreenheckler]

I hit a big deep patch of sand and some how my pedals wouldn't disengage so I just fell right over.

 

[notaknob]

These aren't the droids your looking for...

2000 Fruita Fat Tire Fest, group ride on Sunday.

Fooling around in the parking lot waiting to take off and did a track stand. Fell over in front of everyone. Even stayed clipped in.

Fortunately, nobody I knew was there and I fled the country soon after.

 

[evasive]

On my first clipped-in ride, I did just fine until I got to the bike rack next to the front door of my LBS. Went down hard in right in front of people in the store, and a car parked at the curb. Ta-dah!

 

[whittij]

hot chiquita

riding through cambridge, ma along the charles river there are many a beautiful girl... but on a sunny day a few years ago some young cutie was running in little more than a bikini and while staring at her perfect... well, everything, i hit a parked car. as i collected myself, the car alarm blaring, i looked up into the adjacent building and behind a large picture window there were about a dozen more beautiful young ladies, lounging-out watching tv and staring-out at their amazing view of the river and boston - who then began laughing pretty uncontrollably... the girl i had hit the car while staring at, walked into the same building, which it turns-out was a serority house or dorm of some sort for MIT... all things being equal, it was worth the embarrassment as i can still picture that perfect... well, everything!

 

[Locust]

got stuck

I was going down a hill and came up on a really low branch. I get off the saddle and put my chest as close to it as I could. I made it under the branch, but my camelback didn't. I was just kinda stuck there. The hill was just steep enough that I couldn't push myself out, and I was in such an awkward position that I couldn't unclip. My friend catches up and there I am. sorta like a freeze frame.
Then there was this time that I was trying to impress a girl.......nuff said.

 

[BBOC]

I was at the top of Georgia Pass in CO, just starting on the DH back to Kenosha Pass. A very attractive honey was coming up the singletrack climb, so I yeilded by pulling off to the uphill with only my uphill foot unclipped. As she went by I turned around to watch her go by and started to tip over towards the DH. I couldn't get my foot unclipped in time and just fell right over into some rocks and ended up all bloody. That was a perfect stationary biff.

 

[ebxtreme]

College Days....

It's almost noon on campus of what was a fantastic spring day. Coeds are all over the place and the different patches of lawn are filled with students meeting, eating lunch and playing the ubiquitous hackey sack / frisbee.

I'm riding to my 12 o'clock psych class on my Raleigh Technium (man that thing was sweet! ) and I'm sporting a backpack, shorts, t-shirt, birkenstocks (my college shoe of choice) and no helmet, of course. I had just swung into a convenience store on the way to get one of those ridiculously sized soft drinks (think super big gulp). I'm riding with my right hand on the bars to control the rear brake and my left hand is holding on to this 32 oz. cup of soda. As I'm heading towards my class, the path starts to slope downhill and I'm picking up a bit of speed. I'm on the sidewalk, but since classes had just got out, it was totally packed with people walking towards me. Always considerate, I swing onto the little gravel strip next to the sidewalk....no biggie, it's flat and offers plenty of space.

At the end of the gravel strip (and right in front of my building) is a 5 or 6 inch curb that I need to navigate, but I've done it dozens of times before and then I just swing over to the bike stand, lock up my bike and head to class. Well, unfortunately on this day, I gained a bit too much velocity and my trusty cantilever brakes locked up the rear as I was about 7 feet from the curb. I'm trying to control the skid, but it's no use. I start to slide sideways as I go off the curb and immediately go arse over tea kettle in front of no less than 50 people - many of which were in my class. Once I know I'm going over, I tuck and roll and pop back up onto my feet. Somehow I managed to not injure myself, minus a small scrape on my elbow, and miraculously keep the lid on the drink with only minimal spillage. To somehow make it seem like no big deal, I proclaim "look, no spillage" to those around me and staring with shocked looks.

As I tried to play it off like it ain't no thing. A couple of good friends walked up to me in absolute hysterics as they've just witnessed the entire event. Not being the most subtle guys, they are basically losing it while I'm trying to collect myself and dust myself off. While I could certainly see the humor in the event (now), I was mortified and trying to get the hell out of there. Anyway, I actually went to class that day where a few girls that witnessed the crash asked if I was ok. I, of course, said yeah and made it seem like it was no big deal, all the while wishing I could just crawl into a hole. Meanwhile, my buddy is sitting next to me snickering and pulling twigs and leaves out of my hair during the entire hour.

Churs,
EB

 

[MTDirtGirl]

I had just started back riding, and was taking the bike-ped trails around my town on a rigid Ross MTB--none of that fancy new shock-absorber stuff for me! I rode over a footbridge by the U and there were people all over so I veered off the bridge ramp down to the grass but thought I could just plow through some tall grass--which was disguising a *conveniently* wheel-sized drainage ditch. My front end went down and the bike launched me into the air, with all these people around, and I landed on my right side on the grass. I hurt all over and was sure I broke my collar bone. People were standing around, are you all right??? which made me feel worse. I lay there about 15 minutes until I stood up, and then I was fine and rode home.

I don't know if a front shock would have helped but that and a few other newbie incidents did get me thinking about (1) my skills and (2) the relationship of wheels to the ground.

 

[mr plow]

My most embarrasing moment...

happened years ago when i was riding my bmx to the shop. I must have been about 12 at the time and was very fond of skids. The town that i lived in had unpaved access lanes between houses and ours led directly to the corner shop. I was flying down the lane getting ready for the left hand turn that was ahead of me, which also happened to be where the asphalt footpath started. So i locked up my back brake, swung the back end around and slid for as long as i could. Turned out i was a bit off with my timing because just as i had the bike horizontal, i ran out of dirt! As soon as the tyre hit asphalt it stopped sliding and the bike high-sided me several feet into the air. I landed on my bike and rolled onto the road only to get up and see about 6 of the older kids in town standing outside the shop laughing at me. I got up as quick as i could and tried to pretend it didn't hurt, but as soon as i was out of sight i nearly died of embarrassment, and pain!!
It's a pretty funny memory now, i still can't believe how far the bike threw me and how little i was injured. If that happened now i think i wouldn't bounce anywhere near as well.
I have other more recent moments, but that one just remains the most vivid memory.

 

[Meat Foot]

Second ride on new ti hardtail and I am with some friends. So I come up to this stump in the middle of the trail. First off, I am not into "stunts" or anything of that nature. I rarely get airborne......don't get me wrong I like rollers and catching SOME air here and there. So anyway, friend says "you may want to pick up speed" or something like that off to the sidelines. I get to the top of the stump and saw the ground down a little ways and froze......too late front wheel going over the stump. Now I am look straight to the ground, then the stump, and then the sky, then WHAMP! my back hits the ground. My friend said I let out a whoosh of air from my lungs. HA HA HA. He was saying "you OK?" and I said [in a little different tone] "how's the bike?"

 

[RustyBearings]

to my bro and then immediately nailing my head on it, knocking myself goofy, just to come around in time to hit a high root and endo right in front of him.

This happened several months ago and I think he's still laughing.

I also had to replace my helmet - ugh!

Your description alone made me cry with laughter
Hilarious!

 

[Speedub.Nate]

Early clipless ride. Decided after reaching the peak of Mission Peak I was going to descend some illegal (and trecherous) singletrack on the north side.

Creeping way too slow, the local parks police sneaked up from below in their A-Star and pulled into a hover off to my left, a hundred or so feet away.

I knew I was busted -- they'd gotten a couple of us before. But before he could call me out on the PA, I panicked and gingerly fell over on the rocky trail. Still clipped in.

As I struggled to unclip, I imagined the crew inside laughing their assess off. The broke off and left me alone.

It took me a minute to figure out I had to take my feet out of my shoes to detach myself from the bike. Cut and a little banged up, I remember walking the rest of that section.