the art of falling down

pedalo delgado

figured today felt funny from the start

been using cleats now for just over a month for my hybrid commute - stopping at the lights just past the new vicky hospital I removed my left peg and stopped. sadly leaned too much to the right as I put down my foot and (yup you guessed) keeled over to the right in front of ooo ten or so cars and a few pedestrians, who in equal measure applauded or asked if I was ok

had the oh crikey moment followed by a relaxing 'well its going to happen' and decided to roll into it - luckily only a scraped knee to show for it - the value of cycle helmets argument is one i continue to support :-)

after laughing and basking in my idiocy for five seconds, I got up, made a small bow to the assembled throng and remounted, to find that the camera wasn't recording, so I don't have a tv burp stylee film to enjoy later

made it to the office to discover my employer has finally decided to implement a cycle to work scheme after (insert very long time period gag here) and oh joy its an exclusive deal with h*lf*rds

feck

as things come in threes, can only imagine what it will be like in the pub tonight :-)



*pop* goes the cleat fall virgin


.

alfablue

pedalo delgado wrote:

. . . and oh joy its an exclusive deal with h*lf*rds

feck

So, take your Halfords voucher along to Condor (they accept them) and get a fab bike! Happy days

Kieran_Burns

I managed the first cleat moment in a mirrored way: popped my right foot out at a junction and decided to lean left. I have NO idea what the hell I was thinking but landed in a huge pile of tar and grit and another word ending in 'it'.

My only other one was into the ONLY stretch of brambles on the ENTIRE 1/2 mile stretch of lane. The brambles also hid the huge pile of nettles which I fortunately managed to avoid going head first into by dint of near dislocating my entire upper body.

I can advise that cycling while one half your your whole body is nettle stung is a perversely enjoyable experience. I did actually feel a little nauseous at first but the cool wind on the myriad stings made for the weirdest sensation.

Jay dubbleU

My company also used Halfords but they will order you any bike provided its a current model - you don't have to choose from Halfords lines - took them about three weeks to get me the Giant and the Bike Hut guys set it up OK - its been running for 5 months without problems - took it into my LBS last week just to get the cables re-tensioned after they had bedded in 8)

NGale

I was congratulated today for shopping my new wheels at an LBS instead of Halfords.

Everyone else who has applied to Cyclescheme has gone to Halfords for their kit. As a result I have been asked to help people next year with advice on where to go for what they want and publicise the advantages of shopping locally

davbay

After 2 years of riding with cleats I did my first sylish slo mo topple over last week. I had to do an emergency stop as I almost didn't see a car and went to pull out of a junction on my quiet little estate. Jammed the brakes - left foot out - now the right...bugger.

It all seemed so slow. The kind lady in the White Corsa stopped and smiling wound her window down. We laughed.

Just a lump on my forearm.

NGale

Oh and I fall off my bike with no grace at all. I just land in a heap in front of the car usually

Kenjaja1

My first clipless ride was a short & nervous pootle around the block. I realised I needed to build up confidence so my second ride was about 90 miles and designed to do just that. I kind of accepted that I would probably go tits up once or twice and I wasn't wrong. The first time I just fell off at a junction and suffered no injury. Thje second time I did some advance thinking which went something like this:
"I'd like to stop for a short break. This is a busy & fast road so I had better be careful 'cos if I go over I might get squished. Oh look there is a 6 foot high wall to the left of the pavement on my side of the road - that might come in handy. Oh look there is a ramp for me to get on to the pavement. So I'll ride on to the pavement, slow down & if i don't get my foot out in time I can lean against the wall and I won't fall over"

I still think it was a good plan and, if I had only realised I should have unclipped the right foot instead of the left, it would have been perfect. Instead it was the usual horizontal tangle of arms, legs bike and tarmac.

The third time (on the same ride) I just slowed up near a junction in the middle of the countryside and was suddenly the victim of a vicious and unprovoked attack by a bit of surplus gravity that happened to be on the loose in the area. That one cracked a rib (fortunately not too seriously).

I bet Isaac Newton never realised the potential harm he was releasing on mankind when he invented gravity. Someone should stop these bloody scientists. They gave us nuclear bombs and we forgave them 'cos it ended WWII. They gave us GM crops and our governments (in our name) forgave 'em for that. Now, after, many years of research, they have given us clipless moments and occasional embarassment (even humiliation) at traffic lights. We should ethnically cleanse all scientists before they invent any more catastrophes for the human race.

postscript
I eventually took to riding clipless on all my road bikes and have developed a survival method which works most of the time. I have developed a sixth sense which alerts me to gravity pulses and resulting in unclipping by reflex action. Unfortunately this only works on the bike; it does not help when you are navigating a flight of stairs in the slippy slidey cleats on the stiff cycling shoes.