What is the most embarrassing crash you have ever had?

Si78

Cat With No Tail wrote:

Steep hill
Very Wet Grass
Too much speed
Too much brakes
Bike slides out from under me and I go sliding Superman stylee on my stomach over the very wet grass for quite some way, right through the middle of a group of walkers.
My how they laughed :oops:
To be fair though, it must have looked bloody hilarious, and one of them did trek back up the hill and fetch my bike for me, which was nice.

Excellent! I can totally picture it!

Ive not had an 'off' on the new bike yet, touch wood!

Many years ago, on an old saracen hardtrax (I think) I tried to squeeze through a gap in some railings. Gap wasnt quite wide enough, handle bars jammed into the railings. Bike stopped, I didnt, went over the bars. Laughing girls in attendance...

On the same saracen, again riding to work, my rucksack got caught by a passing CITY LINK van, knocking me off and into stagnant ditch at the side of the road. Arrived at work stinking...

Trying out a mates racer years ago, I got the front wheel stuck in a gap on a manhole cover. Went flyyyyyyyyyyying over the bars. Not injured thankfully. Bike had stayed exactly where it was when I 'left' it...stood upright, front wheel still in the gap. Many friends laughing.


A mate had a hysterically funny (for us) accident many years ago. We were only small, and were riding around in out shorts in the summer. Friend braked too hard, went to go over the bars while still de-pressing the brake lever. Testicles came out of shorts (a la Alan Partridge) and caught in the pinch point on the brake lever as he released it. OUCH! He keeled over, still 'attached' to the bike. I had to press the brake lever again, to free his genitals, when I had stopped laughing.

Si

Stumpy Ade

Although I have a few to choose from ,this is the one that embaresses me the most, especially as I've done it twice :roll:

I was coming down a fast trail and came to a 90degree left handed berm, I was going way to fast, missed the corner completely, took off the lip and landed half way up a pine tree, the thing was dead and looked like a neglected xmas tree. I clamped both arms and legs around it Koala stylie whilst my bike plunged down the hill to it's death.

I was lucky in some respects that only one person witnessed it, but unlucky because he is the biggest p155 taker known to man.

To do it the following week really shouldn't of suprised me.

miss notax

My most embaressing crash was in the New Forest, following some friends along nice singletrack on a summers evening when we spotted a group of runner using the same path. My friends got past them but I decided to bunny hop over the verge, all well and good except I missed and ended up in a tangled heap at the feet of about 6 runners :oops:

Lots of sniggering and not one of the buggers offered to help :?

My most embaressing moment on a bike was in Cwmcarn - having done the XC trail very nicely (even if I say so myself!) I then got myself and my bike stuck in the V shaped barrier at the bottom as I walked it through..... I think I lost all credibility then :oops:

dot1

mine was when i was on my way to my first day of work experience at a bike shop when i was 16. riding along one handed, looked at my watch, my watch said something like 3:20 (it was jsut before 9) so i rode along thinking "what the f**k is going on with my watch" then i thought "i better look up as theres a lamp post coming up in a second" and sure enough, as soon as i looked up, my handlebars smacked the lamp post on the side which i wasnt holding, span round, i went flying over the bars, cut all my arm up. still worked the whole day tho with blood running down my arm incase they sacked me!

Aldo001

Cat With No Tail wrote:

Steep hill
Very Wet Grass
Too much speed
Too much brakes
Bike slides out from under me and I go sliding Superman stylee on my stomach over the very wet grass for quite some way, right through the middle of a group of walkers.
My how they laughed :oops:
To be fair though, it must have looked bloody hilarious, and one of them did trek back up the hill and fetch my bike for me, which was nice.

I had a moment like that the other day but very luckily didn't fall off
It was on a grassy hill with ridges that are usully fun to hop off, I forgot that there was a bench at the bottom of the hill but it was hidden by the ridge
On seeing the bench i grabbed a fistful of front brake, started sliding and managed to hold it up
I then hit a very small ridge that nearly bucked me off
I heard the titters from the oldies sitting on the bench :oops:

Dazzza

Stumpy Ade wrote:

Although I have a few to choose from ,this is the one that embaresses me the most, especially as I've done it twice :roll:

I was coming down a fast trail and came to a 90degree left handed berm, I was going way to fast, missed the corner completely, took off the lip and landed half way up a pine tree, the thing was dead and looked like a neglected xmas tree. I clamped both arms and legs around it Koala stylie whilst my bike plunged down the hill to it's death.

I was lucky in some respects that only one person witnessed it, but unlucky because he is the biggest p155 taker known to man.

To do it the following week really shouldn't of suprised me.

I have to admit as to wondering what one does when missing a berm, i now know.

I did once do a superman in front of a few friends whilst going down a very rocky path in carn brea, oddly it wasn't the steepest part neither, anyway bash my knee on the way over apart from that only my pride was hurt, took me a good couple minutes to get up it was a narrow hedgerow and me bike landed on top. :oops:

djvagabon

Stumpy Ade wrote:

Although I have a few to choose from ,this is the one that embaresses me the most, especially as I've done it twice :roll:

I was coming down a fast trail and came to a 90degree left handed berm, I was going way to fast, missed the corner completely, took off the lip and landed half way up a pine tree, the thing was dead and looked like a neglected xmas tree. I clamped both arms and legs around it Koala stylie whilst my bike plunged down the hill to it's death.

I was lucky in some respects that only one person witnessed it, but unlucky because he is the biggest p155 taker known to man.

To do it the following week really shouldn't of suprised me.

That is fooking hilarious.

Surf-Matt

Hammered it towards a log (about 1.5ft high) on my then new Stumpjumper with SPDs, bottled it at the last second, slammed on the brakes, flipped head over heels (still attached) and landed on my head.

A women pushing her baby saw and was initally really worried. But then laughed when it was clear my neck wasn't broken and I was okay...

I was better at making a gimp of myself on my skateboard - "look at my new trick" - SPLAT!

Frools

first ride with SPDs obviously

right at the beginning, track started in like a family walky type area, so lots of kids and stuff
hence was going along pretty slow and careful when some woman stepped out in front of me and just stopped
so i stopped, forgetting i had SPDs on
i think you can imagine the rest

not painful or anything but definately the most embaressing :P

lovewales

Riding across a flatish field near Derwent when I some how got the front wheel in a gully the rear wheel was at the side, the next thing I know I am going in ever decreasing circles laid right over and waiting for the inevitable unable to stop myself going around

Other one was feeling confident on SPD's I tried to jump a stream when I got too close I realised I would never make it and ended up with the front wheel in it straight over the bars, no damage to self so got up very quickly hoping no one had seen I jumped back on the bike and rode off, path got narrow next to pond when I realised that the front wheel was buckled and I couldn't keep it on the path bike went sideways I went up and landed on the end of the handle bar, resulting in a bruise that got published in a mags injury section

Aldo001

Ouch!
I saw that picture :shock:
Looked mighty sore

Ditch Witch

Would have to be my first, inevitable SPD crash.

Pulled up to a stop with left foot unclipped only to have bike fall over to the right. In front of a group of walkers. And their kids. Who laughed. A lot. I think they may have been pointing and gripping their stomachs, too.

counterculture

going slowly down the last rocky section on the devils staircase, i decided it would be best to go round on the dirt as it would be less slippy, its was alot less slippery, however i didnt see the drainage ditch, front wheel got stuck, i went over the handlebars and to the side, leg trapped in the frame and bike landed on my back, very graceful!!

bomberesque

Not so much stupid as scary and bloody inconvenient (OK, a little stupid)

3 1/2 weeks ago doing 40kph at the bottom of a farmtrack descent in the Belgian Ardennes.

The farmtrack was (still is, I'm pretty sure) hardpack gravel and not at all rutted.

My riding companion was a way behind and I was worried that he'd fallen, the top section had been much rootier and he's french so a bit of a wendy on a bike

I look over my shoulder quickly and don't see him.

I look further round preparing to hurl some anti-french abuse at him for being such a poof

then i hear the tell tale sound of side knobs against rut. I realise that they're mine. oh.

I've turned so far around that my shoulders rotated and I've come up against the verge. I also realise that I've gone too far to turn away but to turn into and over the edge would end up in a short and painful meeting with the barbed wire fence that's just the other side of the verge. I have to dump the bike. I look down. The floor looks really hard and not at all inviting and it's wizzing past almost as fast as it seems to be wizzing up. I swear loudly at myself. I hit the ground. This must have been split second stuff, but I remember each thought and decision, including the "oh, you f*&king idiot"

It's the first crash in a long time when my first thought wasn't "is my bike OK?" that was my clue as to how bad it was. After lying on the floor for 5 minutes or so trying not to be sick I finally got up and tested the bones. No breaks (phew) but no pain either and a very meaty knee / calf. Shock then.

10 km ride back to the car then a 100 km drive back to town, the ride probably did some good. A couple of Rochefort 6 (Trappist beer from these parts) definitely helped. the wound wasn't deep but it was extensive (no skin left on the knee or the outside of the shin / calf) and it bled out quite a lot which probably helped clean it further after I'd emptied my camelback on it and given it a good trailside "do it while it still doesn't hurt" scrub

Next day (monday) I put some jeans on to go to work. nope, that's not going to work. Changed those for tracksuit bottoms (nice and loose) and went off. At lunchtime I walked the 500m to the canteen ("it'll help keep the knee moving")

teh knee blew up until the tracksuit was tight around it. I honestly thouht it was just going to keep expanding till it burst, I've never seen anything like it since that interweb kid and the snakebite that made his arm burst. To the doctor then.

Fortunately I work in a refinery so they have their own med staff. Only they said "we can't do anything with that, go to hospital." Bugger. Even more fortunately the refinery is in a large docks area so they have their own hospital. In, stripped and xrayed in 5 minutes, I'll definitely be using them again! Xray was clear but knee now the size of a large haggis and quickly going a similar colour.

All bandaged up I could hardly drive my car, which is a pain as I'm self employed (no med benefits) and work 75 km from where I live. Bah, I'd survive and anyway the doctor didn't say *don't* drive.

I soldier on.

3 days later my leg is purple from ankle to crotch, but only on the inner side ... away from the wound. It was later explained to me that this was because teh blood was pooling in the lowest piont of my leg while I slept. Apparantly nuses call it "Cadaver leg" which is lovely I think.

2 weeks later and they finally say I can go without the bandage and they tell me to wear shorts for the next week, to dry the thing out. They've been changing it every 2 days and putting some burn stuff on it to stop it scabbing over, so, aside from having to wash standing up in front of the sink (couldn't get the dressing wet) the wound itself just looks disgusting. By this stage my leg is well on it's way through the spectrum and now shows purple in stripes where the bandage was prolonging the blood pooling. Proper horror show. That weekend we went to London for a party and I wore shorts on the tube. Lets just say I was given plenty of room :oops:

The following weekend we were in Scotland for teh Heneken cup final and supposed to be ridin Glentress with my cousin. bikes slipped off the agenda as the knee just wouldn't move enough.

It's now 3 1/2 weeks later and I can finally bend the knee enough ride my refinery bike to the canteen. CT scan is clear but I've not yet got enough confidence in the strength to go mountainbiking again so I'm off out for a flat road bimble this weekend.

All this started on the same day that Mrs B picked up an IBIS tranny frame for me in Canada. This bike is to be my new single speed and is the single shiniest (not to mention most expensive) piece of bike I've ever bought (about 1 euro per gramme for the frame :shock: ) And it's a single speed so having spent the last 3 weeks looking at it I'm gonna have to wait longer until I have confidence enough to crank the knee properly.

arse arse bugger and f&*k

Aldo001

I actually baulked at parts of that :shock:
Bummer about the new bike as well that you cant ride it
Was the Heinekin Cup Final good? I couldnt get tickets and the Jim Clark Rally was on in the Borders
Im going biking tomorrow, so hopefully I wont have anything to post here... :roll:

Beardface

Being 13, on my brand new Diamond back of some description... riding along a smooth, flat, straight bit of road, with no traffic.. somehow managed to touch a kerb ever so slightly, which started me wobbling..

Cue panicking (as you do when you're a kid), and slipping off the pedals, nuts smashing onto the top tube.. then propelling forward, hitting the poor buggers on the stem even harder. Then fell off onto a gravel driveway, busting my knee and opening my leg up in various places. Cue me looking down and bursting into tears..

I was even more gutted when I realised the blood wasnt going to wash off my brand new, white nike trainers, and that my front wheel now resembled a taco..

Oh, and just for good measure, my dad decided that neat TCP would make the pain go away... :evil:

weedy1

Stav83 wrote:

Oh, and just for good measure, my dad decided that neat TCP would make the pain go away... :evil:

Thats straight from the 'Dads book of Dad'

My personal moment of mortification came on a snowboard in Italy.
With way too much confidence and way too little skill me and 2 of my mates shot into a kind of 1/2 pipe run.

My 2 mates bailed but I was doing o.k. zipping up and down except now the distance between the banks is closing and I'm picking up way too much speed.

Now I'm in real trouble I'm going so fast I'm having trouble just keeping upright, too scared to bail and no room to turn to bleed off speed.

Then I shoot round the corner and see it.

I've been funnelled into a facking big ramp and there's no way I can get out.

'Oh s@it' was my exact thought as I shot up into the air and 'double sh@t' as it dawned on me this came out in front of a massively busy cafe.

there was one fleeting moment I actually thought I may land it and look 'Fonz' but no.
A nose first, bone crunching, lung empting, snow munching, 'quick get a camcorder its £250 guaranteed on you've been framed' epic fail followed.

My mates turned up to give me a hand up and thats when people in the cafe started clapping. nice.

I've fallen and crashed bikes before but no-ones ever really seen it.

DHO Dude

Mine would have to be going over the bars about 10m away from Cwm Carn car park. I don't know why I did that to this day.

A mate of mine managed to do the exact same thing, although when he did it it was in Cardiff city centre riding past a club on a busy saturday night :?

bomberesque

Aldo001 wrote:

I actually baulked at parts of that :shock:
Bummer about the new bike as well that you cant ride it
Was the Heinekin Cup Final good? I couldnt get tickets and the Jim Clark Rally was on in the Borders
Im going biking tomorrow, so hopefully I wont have anything to post here... :roll:

Ta, I'm *really* frustrated that I can't ride the new bike but I need to control myself or I'll do more damage. I'm actually tempted to fit gears to it so I can at least ride it 1x9 until the knee is better but, meh, I have a geared bike....

HC final was well worth the trip on its own (as was seeing the cousins and aunties tbh, it's been a few years since i've spent time with them)

Just got permission from Mrs B last night to book Zebrugge Hull ferry for a return week in August so we'll see what all this 7stanes hype is all about then!

hucking_fell

Some more stories involving bikes and pain here:
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/forums/vie ... highlight=

Aldo001

Hucking Fell wrote:

Some more stories involving bikes and pain here:
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/forums/vie ... highlight=

some of those are brilliant!
one of them reminds me of a crash aaaaages ago
I was riding along the side of the local loch on he path, i decidded it would be a great idea to fall into a massive bush of stingy nettles... it hurt and i cried
i was with 2 mates and one of their mums :oops:

snotty badger

When i was about 15 I was cycling through town on my trusty old Univega with a pal. Turning left onto a junction I leaned over a tad too much (maybe trying to get my knee down?!) and the tyres broke grip; cue me lying on my back while my bike slid across the road and wiped my mate out. He wasn't best pleased, maybe because it was by a busy bus stop it didn't help either...

hucking_fell

Loads more here too:
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/forums/vie ... sc&start=0

This is what I meant to link to the first time.

The shopping trolley story sticks in my mind. Would love to have seen that.

ariteofpassage

Years ago, was just setting off on a ride on my rigid stumpjumper, wasn't looking where I was going.........rode straight into the back of a parked car, bending my forks back in towards the frame! Had a quick look around, hoping no one had seen and made off, tail between my legs!!! :-(

GTi-R23

Mine was up at Llandegla a few months back, my riding mate had stopped in between some wooden railings halfway round the red route, and was admiring some young ladies on the adjacent fire road trying to look cool, I came steaming up behind him, also admiring said young ladies without paying much attention to where I was going and I creamed right into the back of him and took us both out as I had no where else to go when I finally looked and saw him stopped there :oops:

Needless to say, the young ladies didn't give us any admiring glances back, more like pee'd themselves laughing at us :roll: I've still got a bit of a scar on my arm where i hit the wooden railings/my mate

Aldo001

Having a crash is damn annoying when your trying to look "cool" in front of some ladies, especially ladies that you are likely to see again :oops:

warm18

my most embarrassing crash has to be on the orad coming into a village after a long ride. i was trying to see if my speed came up on the speed camera lcd board. i didnt notice i'd drifted left rubbernecking the electronic sign and i was heading striahgt into a curb. i didnt have enough tme to pull up over it so i ended glancing off it. came straight off rolling along the path. the cars just behind me must have thought what the hell i was playing at....

Mr Wu

Straight into the back of a "picking up" bus, whilst standing on the stunt pegs of a BMX with my mate driving. we were gormlessly staring at some fit girls, I broke my nose and wrist.

lawman

well ive had a few but my most embarassing ones were pretty bad

first was walking with my bike through town, talking my mate and decided to show him how balanced my bike was when i let it go, all was going well until the front whel went, i tried to catch the bike, pulled the brake, bike did an endo, smakcked me in the balls and then i fell over it and landed on my hands and knees. oh and it was market day :oops:


second was purely silly showboating. i went to a test day at rutland water, having a balst on an intense tracer, then the rain came and on the way back i decided to do abit of speedway style drifting ........ on wet grass.

needless to say it went wrong and i ended up on my arse infront of about 30 windsurfers

the moral is dont drift on wet grass :P

rob_mafia

When I was a teenager my parents bought me a Raliegh Kalahari with a girbin flexstem (I was the dogs gonads. Fact. lol) I was tootling down the road and saw a few mates, so not wanting to show off to much I sped up and headed straight for my mates, pulled the brake on and pulled the most amazing skid EVER, with the front wheel, in my moment of ego I had totally got it wrong and pulled the front brake on quite hard, the wheel stopped, the back end came up and the front wheel skidded from under me.


Needless to say it hurt quite a bit, I had an imppressive graze down my face, left shoulder and left side, but worst of all I got the pi$$ taken out of me for the next 7 years, and it only stopped because I moved county LOL.