Most embarrassing fall !

robinta

On Sun whilst heading in my usual loop towards home, I took a short cut which leads to a short stretch of singletrack. Unfortunately I hit an `obstacle` and landed face-first (a highly effective way of stopping quickly) on tarmac. I felt no immediate pain, just the feeling of tooth exploding on asphalt. I then had to ride home one-handed, pouring blood and scaring pedestrians as I spat out teeth and blood fragments like something out of a Tom & Jerry cartoon :shock:

The embarrassing part is, a padded-up MT biker on a full-susser SHOULD be able to negotiate a 4" kerb in Morrisons car park in front of 50 startled shoppers without needing dental reconstruction :oops:

As my face starts to heal to its former glory (?), customers at work thinkthe scabs are herpes and colleagues are calling me Evil Knievel.
(I knew I should have lied and said it happened coming down Snowdon).

So whats everyone else`s most embarrssing `off`

(PS anyone want a cheap copy of The Collective or Roam ? Its stablisers for me from now on)

Anonymous

Haha! nice one!

Several years ago, I was doing a multi-sport thing over three days (hiking, kayaking, climbing, MTBing, rafting, abseiling, assault course).
Everybody had high hopes on me winning the MTB round hands-down, being the only mountain biker in the field it seemed. However, I had to wait at the bottom of a descent for my team mates, so I started showing off, by doing a rolling stoppie.

Unfortunately, the bikes we were given for the event had V-brakes, and a slight buckle in the rim, so it grabbed hard, and piledrived me into the floor, in front of the organisers!

They though't I'd never ridden Vs before, and cautioned me about the power of the brakes, whilst I tried to explain that I'm used to disc brakes etc through a cut up, blushing face!

Kiwi Kranker

Was riding through Hyde Park in London infront of a whole lot of tourists and general London punters. Randomly saw a mate slowed down and unclipped from my left pedal and fell over onto my right hand side.

the term 'muppet' certainly described me that day. :oops:

Torres

Riding with my mate and his folks on a really muddy day.
Just passed through a gate, in to a torn up section with my tyres completely caked in.
Got on the bike and started peddling, got no traction and the wheel just spun in the mud.
Ended up falling off sideways and teddy-bear rolling down a hill.
Owww

taliesyn

My most embarrasing one happened a couple of weeks ago. I'd changed my SPD pedals for new ones and went ahead with adjusting the release tension. However, I got distracted by the phone after doing the first one. Having answered the phone, I then went back and adjusted the other one. Unfortunately still distracted, I turned the allen key the wrong way.

I took a small test ride up the hill near my house, and decided to stop and turn back half way up. You guessed it, I couldn't get my foot out of the pedal

I (very gracefully I might add ) fell over sideways, and still attached, into what seemed like the only patch of super robust and extra stingy Welsh nettles for miles. It was a lovely soft landing, but my T-shirt didn't do a very good job of protecting my right arm and lower back. My right arm was in a hell of a state for a couple of days lol.

Thank goodness there was no one around at the time

tjm

Plenty of unclipping incidents and I normally fall of at least once per ride but i can usually blame that on being a bit crap and pushing the envelope a bit too far.

A couple of days ago I was riding home through the woods , in my work kit so just cruising along. Out of boredom I decided to manual over a small bump, went off line, braked hard to avoid a tree and went over the bars - landing squarely on the top of my head. All at probably around 5 mph.....

Luckily the only witness was a squirrel but I've got a very sore neck!

stubs

I was riding at bit of singletrack when coming towards me I spotted 2 young ladies being a gentleman I decided to stop and let them past I unclipped and put my foot down and put it on a small rock the rocked rolled I lost my footing and fell over down a bank I must have rolled about 5 times earth sky earth sky till I hit the bottom I was okay but when the 2 girls realised I was okay they couldnt stop laughing they walked away still laughing and kept stopping looking back and giggling again as I sweated and swore trying to drag my bike up the slope

boyfriday

Not on my mountain bike (although there have been a fair few), but on the road bike - an embarrassing fall nevertheless.

I was taking my bike for a service and dropping it at the lbs. I was attired for the day on the basis i would be leaving it with the shop so i was wearing normal civilian clothes of jeans and a little retro adidas tracksuit top (which tends to get attention given it's bright red).

Decided that the lbs was just around the corner and to get there quicker i'd hop on the bike in my jeans. Pedalled 100 yards or so and realised that my jeans were slipping down and my ass was close to being exposed. At this moment i noticed 2 attractive females looking over (probably not at me personally, but at this moron in civilian clothes, bright red top and riding a fancy bike). I then figured that as i went past them, if they looked back at me, my ass would well and truly be on show for all to see.

So, i sat up on the bike and tried to adjust my jeans. Big mistake. My jeans got caught in the crank causing the bike to stop and i went over the bars right in front of them in the middle of the road.

Not much fun. No damage done to either me or the bike though which was a bonus. The pride did take a battering though.

Steve_F

Front of a queue of traffic at the lights and balancing, clipped in, front wheel caught the front of my toe and you guessed it. Couldn't get away from the lights quick enough, loads of traffic around too. :oops:

MonkeyMurphia

mine was at one of the Gorrick spring series events a few years back, my first race as well.

i was struggling up the rear with a few other stragglers, knocking around in 48th - 50th place (out of 60!). i was just about to complete my first lap which cumlimanted in a tricky technical (at my level anyway) decent down past the finish line where the organisers had a small portakabin for the starters and announcer.

just as i came to the bottom of the descent, concentrating as much as i could and approaching the people on the sidelines the announcer said "and here comes rider number 27, Garrett Murphy, in 50th place", at which point i immediately looked round and went straight over the handle bars. "Oops, I think Garrett had a rush of blood to the head there", the announcer said rather unhelpfully.

the 2nd lap was a struggle, the pain (apart from the lack of fitness causing me to struggle all the way round, i had my seat post too high and cracked my Coccyx from repetitive banging on the saddle nose!) and embarrassment have lived with me ever since!

Mrs Toast

God, where to begin?

Mine was a kerb-based fall too - I hit it at completely the wrong angle and went flying, in front of all my fiancé's mates and a bunch of other riders. Felt like a right tit! It ranks as my most embarrassing, as let's face it, roots, rocks...that's fine. But a kerb. That said, I've had some fairly bad ones off-road as well, which are embarrassing as they were so avoidable.

Another was when I first started biking last year, and I was still a bit wobbly and lacking in confidence (I'd never really ridden a bike much as a kid). Despite this, I decided to follow my fiancé down a foot-wide path which had a sheer drop on the right-hand side. As I rolled down, I hit a rock and panicked, and put my brakes on. My bike stopped, and I put my right foot down. Unfortunately, there was no ground there, so I fell sideways off a 6ft drop. Ouch.

The other was last week. At the local trail centre, I can do pretty much the entire trail with no problems, but there are a couple of bits which still flummox me.

The first is a rock at the start of the one section. It looks inoffensive enough, but mentally, I can't get my head round it, even though I know I take worse stuff - I think it's because the other stuff I just flow into, whereas this (being at the start of a section) gives me too much time to think. On Friday, with the encouragement of my fiancé, I tried to take it. Slowly. Too slowly. I fell sideways, crunched my left shin between a rock and my bike...and my face landed in a patch of nettles.

The second bit is a short but steep hill with a root at the top of it. I normally walk up it, but the one time there were two guys and a little lad (about 8 or so) at the side of the trail. I tried to get up it, ran out of momentum near the top, skidded backwards and fell off. I then walked up the hill. The small child rode up it fine. -_-

schmako

Nothing too shocking, on the road bike to work in the winter, below zero temperatures and there is a sharp left hand turn into the road my works on. Little do I know there is black ice and take the corner at usual speed, and slide out hit my left arm, leg and brused my hip. Could only jump straight up dust myself off and walk to work whilst 10 stupid kids stood and laughed.

tjm

ok, as we are still going... my last but one embarrassment.

Out for a ride with mates on a bike I had just bought off one of them. My first time playing with the forks. On a climb I wound the forks to as short as possible (coil u-turn) to get the front low and the forks stiff, I also increased the rebound as well.
Blitzed up the climb feeling all pleased with myself Took the p*ss from my mate for not making the climb on the fancy EX8 he now owns....

Then a little while later I came across a small ditch so I used the forks to lift the front over. Unfortunately I had forgotten to unwind the u-turn and rebound so the front stayed firmly stuck to the ground. :-o
Front wheel went in the ditch, I went over the bars......

at least that time I managed to roll properly so the only thing damaged was my pride!

Anonymous

tjm, I don;t get it. why would the front not come up with shorter forks?

wordnumb

Thrashing around the local woods one morning, had been riding laps on my own for several hours. Noticed a couple of riders up ahead, I wasn't racing but caught up with them pretty quick. They heard me and pulled over to let me pass, which I did with a cheery greeting to show that I wasn't some hardcore nutter psycho.

Unfortunately saying good morning distracted me enough so that my right handlebar clipped a small tree sending me head first into a very large fir.

Stupid place to put a tree.

wordnumb

Tree was fine, by the way.

Luke-Dob

wordnumb wrote:

Tree was fine, by the way.

Thats good to know...

Ontopic = Thrashing round local trails again but have to travel down the main road to get back to my house. Traffic lights and the typical "Oh shi- cant get clip out" moment and fell sideways infront of traffic, to make matters worse the lights turned green and in there way was my head. But some nice people did help me up

Alexonnavitch

I had a fairly large crash as a kid... me and about 4 mates were having a race down this very steep straight road near where i used to live. Anyway as you can imagine the competitive instinct took over so we were all hammering it way to fast to stop at the bottom.... ended up with 3 of us face first in the side of the builders van that was opposite the t junction, a broken nose and 4 dislocated/broken fingers were the sum total of all that bravado that day LOL

As an adult my most embarrassing crash was actualy caused by someone else. Im merrily peddalling along the road when the traffic coming past me starts to queue in front of me. I carry on down the gap between the cars and kerb when all of a sudden someone decides to get out their passenger door!! Panic ensues and i try to bunny hop up kerb, front wheel makes it, back doesnt.. couple with that the lack of unclipping from pedals and im pretty much knee sliding along the kerb.... i hit the person getting out the car and they go flying back into the car and my right knee removes the door card completely off the inside of thecar door!! they were not happy to say the least, i picked myself up and told em to use their brains as they had overtaken me about 20 seconds beforehand, and left them in the queue shouting about me paying for the door ha ha i think not

tjm

yeehaamcgee wrote:

tjm, I don;t get it. why would the front not come up with shorter forks?

Two reasons I guess
1) My weight was more forward keeping the front down
2) I tend to rely on the bounce from the forks to help the front off the ground. With it wound down (and the rebound set slow) the fork is pretty stiff so doesn't compress or rebound much with my weight.

I know I should have been able to manual the bike with a rigid front fork but I am crap and manuals and I was expecting more bounce from the fork so I didn't do enough to get any response.

delcol

mine was on open moor land so there was no one around to see it only my brother,

was going down hill on the moors and the ground was like a woop section on a 4x bmx course so i was jumping them and pumping them in the distance i could see what looked like the biggest one i could only think impress my bro and get huge air i started to pedal hard as i got into the dip it was a peat bog i was traveling at a fair old pace, i had pushed the front end down to compress the forks to jump out of the other side my front wheel sunk right in past the hub bike stopped dead i didnt straight over the bars,.. bike stayed in the peat bog stood up in the endo position.... :oops:

chorus of ruin

Just the other day I tried to get on my bike outside my house, I didnt realize how low my jeans were, as I was swinging my leg over the top tube the amount of "travel" my jeans allowed for upward leg movement "bottomed out" and my leg stopped its upward arc. I proceeded to loose my balance and face plant the drain grate.

Lots of people were watering their gardens

It was fail.

williamw1987

When I was 12 I think, I was on my paper round cycling along the pavement as you do, not paying attention to anything in particular when my right handle bar whacks straight into a lamp post, making my fly left off the bike in to the road lol. Thankfully I don't think there was anyone up at that time...

Itsari

I was coming over the Garth about 7 years ago with my mate, encountered a car coming up the other way, not wanting too loose too much speed, I thought I would hop on to the little bit of pavement and give me and the car a bit more space...

I got up it alright but for some reason I completly failed to see all the bins taking up most of the path -.-

Bin day 1 me 0

skullthaw

bunny hopped over a kerp sepperating 2 parking bays and laanded on black ice skidded for about 30 feet and shit an old man in a daewood little car about 50 foot from work when my collegues were outside

massive gauge out of my knee and a big grase on leg and my pedal was minced (metal)

hastings

I went to go and watch my girlfriend play in a netball tournament and on leaving i hit a 6" deep drainage ditch at speed at an angle. I ended up on my arse sliding 10m on concrete and put a 1cm deep hole in my arm/elbow, my hip and leg. And if tht was not good enough nearly all of the teams there saw it and the fans which was close to 300 people :oops:

stu8975

We need a riders injuries piccies section...stage/type 5 separated shoulder on my way to work last year in the lovely summer downpours, low speed front wheel washout, kept hold of the bars so the bike didnt hit the kerb...3 months of work tho..woohoo...before and after pics....you can just make out the 8inch scar..healed up quite nice..shoulder is a bit dicky tho.