Whats the most stupid thing you have done

Mr Will

First ride out with clipless pedals - riding along quite happily on a quiet residential street and getting the hang of them without much trouble. Remember hearing something about pedalling with only one foot and decide to give it a try. Unclip left foot and practice making circles with my right, which goes swimmingly. The push-pull motion feels a bit strange but I start to pick up a decent bit of pace. It was at this point that my (unclipped) left foot decided it had had enough of flapping about in the breeze and instead jumped through the spokes of my front wheel.

I still to this day do not know how it ended up there but I vividly remember the effects; Wheel pulls foot rapidly around to the back of the forks and then stops dead. Bike begins to rotate rapidly around now stationary wheel. With one foot clipped securely in to the pedal and the other trapped securely in the front wheel, there is nothing I can do but go with it. I hit the ground shoulder first, roll on to my back and slide a short distance down the road with the bike (still firmly attached) on top of me.

Total damage - Bruises, grazes and a completely pringled front wheel :-(

keef66

Mr Will wrote:

First ride out with clipless pedals - riding along quite happily on a quiet residential street and getting the hang of them without much trouble. Remember hearing something about pedalling with only one foot and decide to give it a try. Unclip left foot and practice making circles with my right, which goes swimmingly. The push-pull motion feels a bit strange but I start to pick up a decent bit of pace. It was at this point that my (unclipped) left foot decided it had had enough of flapping about in the breeze and instead jumped through the spokes of my front wheel.

I still to this day do not know how it ended up there but I vividly remember the effects; Wheel pulls foot rapidly around to the back of the forks and then stops dead. Bike begins to rotate rapidly around now stationary wheel. With one foot clipped securely in to the pedal and the other trapped securely in the front wheel, there is nothing I can do but go with it. I hit the ground shoulder first, roll on to my back and slide a short distance down the road with the bike (still firmly attached) on top of me.

Total damage - Bruises, grazes and a completely pringled front wheel :-(

Were we separated at birth? You've re-enacted my stunt!

dmclite-3.0

This wasn't me........
A mate on a club run had his computer sensor mounted on the front fork but it was cable tied to the rear of the fork. We were doing about 18mph when he hit a bump, looked down and notised sensor mount had shifted and was not picking up the magnet, so he reached down, with bare hands and tried to move sensor closer to the moving spokes........he snapped his finger quite painfully between the spokes and forks, I wince about it now, but it still makes me chuckle.

ilovegrace

Last week riding my cx bike through the local trails decided to put my gloves back on a la professional riders ,passes two elderly ladies and was heading towards a young couple when bang down i went , all concerned (apart from me) were suppressing fits of giggles with a comment from the young chap , "you need to be riding faster to do that".
Laughed it of at the time but cursed my stupidity for the rest of the ride.
No more no hands stuff for me any time soon !!

CStar

keef66 wrote:

Maybe 10 yrs old, pootling up the road on my gas-pipe sit up and beg first bike, noticed the light bracket on the fork leg was slightly skew-whiff. Tried tapping it straight with my right foot as I went along. Managed to overdo it and inserted my foot into the revolving wheel.

The exact mechanical explanation of what happened next has always eluded me, but what I think occurred was:

Foot continued to follow the revolving wheel, which prised me off the saddle and towards the bars
Foot met fork at which point the wheel locked, I felt as though I'd severed all my toes, and the entire bike commenced a forward roll with me still attached.
Somehow I too manage to roll (I think that certainly saved my face / teeth) but then when I landed on my back on the road I was soon joined by the bike which landed saddle first on my b0llocks. I cannot stress enough that the bike weighed half a ton.

All this in the middle of the road leading into the estate, so first reaction was to check for hysterical onlookers. Luckily my attempted suicide had gone completely unobserved, so I was able to hobble home and inspect the damage. Interesting crease in my shoe, and my toes looked like they'd been caught in a giant mouse trap. Testicular area rather tender. Bike completely unharmed. Light bracket still pointing sideways.

Proper LOL !

CiB

Built a front wheel drive bike when I was about 13, with just rear brakes that were operated by a front lever + cable, mounted upwards on the crossbar - it couldn't have been in a more dangerous place if I'd sat down and thought about first. I lent it to my mate who got barely 100 yards up the road on it before the local copper stopped him, gave him a b0ll0cking and made him walk to school.

As an adult, riding along at about 15mph trying trying to eat a Yorkie bar but needed to remove my gloves, so put the unwrapped chocolate on the nearest available flat surface which happened to be the speedo, and watched as the choc jumped straight off it and into the busy traffic where it was instantly flattened.

Hoopdriver

I had not long finished a bicycle maintenance course, and having earned my City & Guilds thing, was on the alert for anything that required wrenching. Sure enough I hear some quite harsh rasping from my front wheel one morning. Ah ha, thinks I - a bearing job. So I out the tools and get cracking and having had lots of instruction in these things do a nice job of overhauling the hub and replacing the bearings. I replaced the wheel - rasping still there. So out come the cone wrenches once more for some fine tuning. Lots of fine tuning. A good half an hour of it. No matter what I did though I couldn't get the wheel to turn quietly. Smoothly, yes, quietly no. Finally I put my brain into gear and looked under the mudguard and there by golly was a dried leaf, caught on a rivet. Wheels run much quieter without dried leaves rasping against the tyre. I removed leaf and presto, problem solved.

I went out for a nice long (quiet) ride, no longer feeling like such a hot wrench.

oceheb

Long time time ago I had my first bike and changed flat handlebar to road one. For some reason I couldn't fix the handlebar into stem completely, the handlebar still was able to rotate inside the stem a little bit, probably because the diameter of handlebar wasn't right.
So, as an result, on one sunny day, the handlebar snapped in the middle, luckily the speed was low.

ademort

Married the EX wife
Ademort

neeb

Last year my rear derailleur cable snapped (frayed inside the shifter) 20 miles from home. Not a disaster I thought, I'll just ride home on the 50/11 and 36/11. For some reason I thought it would be best to remove the snapped cable, so I undid the derailleur pinch bolt and pulled it out... Got home to find I had lost the cable housing going from the chainstay to the derailleur, the cable pinch bolt (which I hadn't tightened again) and the washer... Being Super Record special black ones they weren't cheap or easy to replace either...

priory

>As a local gp I find that there is always someone around to report my
>activities.
>I sped down hill toward the traffic stopping at the road works traffic
>lights, hopped onto the right side pavement which ran alongside a bushy
>hedge and was obviously unused, and rather smugly continued at some
>pace down the hill until I almost reached the traffic queue at the
>downhill lights.
>At this point a branch projecting from the hedge stuck through my front
>wheel , stopping me instantly and flipping me upside down ,feet(spd)
>and hands and bum still on the bike , into the hedge, which supported
>me and bike perfectly in this inverted state.
>As I sat there planning my next move I had to watch a column of drivers
>go past laughing their heads off, upside down.

cheaterkiller

I once said "will you marry me". I doubt anyone could get any stupider than that.

Wirral_paul

cheaterkiller wrote:

I once said "will you marry me". I doubt anyone could get any stupider than that.

Well - your wife said "yes"................

beams87

When I was 10, I was cycling around town on my day's bike with a blatant disregard for my own safety, and that of pedestrians I flew straight over a cross roads (very narrow lanes, old ton centre) and slammed into the passenger front door. I flew.
Literally, over the car as my front wheel bent right angles against the door. Landed in a heap against a stone wall, but unscathed.

declan1

Gpfanuk wrote:

Received my first set of shoes, cleats and clipless pedals and then whilst wondering how they fitted I proceeded to clip a cleat (without it being bolted to a shoe) to a pedal (without that being attached to the bike)! Spent the next half an hour cursing and sweating whilst trying to unclip... Eventually had to attach the pedal to the bike to be able to generate some torque to perform the task! Doh! :oops: I wonder if anyone else did this ?

Yes, I did that. Ended up prising it off with a screwdriver :P

Anonymous

Cannot think of the actual stupidest right now but the last time I felt really stupid was when I packed all my kit in my mates car for a long ride.
Remembered everything...............except to put the pads back in my helmet after washing them
Wearing an ill fitting helmet with little velcro (the rough side) pads scratching at your head for 4 hours is no fun

dmclite-3.0

Just remembered, I got a new set of carbon road shoes, and so went upstairs to try them on, 2 velcro and a ratchet strap, so put them on, ratcheted up and then proceeded to spend the next 40 minutes trapped in them as I had no idea how to undo the ratchet. :oops:

esafosfina1

Even pros make some monumental cock-ups... I was riding through St. Niklaas (Flanders) with a team-mate and we took a short-cut passed a girls high-school... we were both checking out the girls and waving at them when a car stopped at a pedestrian-crossing... and, yep, we both slammed into the back of the bloody thing, much to the mirth of the girls, the displeasure of the driver, and the annoyance of our team-mechanic who had to replace two front wheels and two forks! What cracked me up was my team-mate was a very well known Belgian pro, and when the driver of the car got out to berate us he then asked for a bidon and an autograph!

navrig

As I posted on another thread.

Broke my arm after my wife fell off her MTB knocking me off my MTB and us both landing in a heap.

Why did she fall off?

'Coz, I slapped her bum as I passed her.