Can you say "lucky"?

[merlinmurph]

Put the bike in the car this morning before heading to work.
Get to work, go to get the bike out - no front wheel. Campy Neutron Ultras.
Must have left it leaning against the car when I left.
All sorts of ugly thoughts involving a scrunched wheel enter into my head as I go back home (10 minutes) to get the wheel.
Get back home and the wheel is sitting there untouched.

Whew.

Enjoy your ride, and don't forget your wheel,
Murph

[Keith A]

Several years ago, a riding pal of mine and I were chatting after a ride which he had driven to. As we departed and I started to ride off...suddenly, I hear this loud crunching sound. I turned around to see my friend backing over his very nice (and expensive) carbon front wheel. I turned back around to console my friend and he said that his car was beeping at him to let him know there was something behind when he was backing up, but he couldn't see anything...so he ignored the warning :eek:

[p nut]

My bike fell off the bike rack at 75mph one time, on the freeway, in the middle of the night. Similar ugly thoughts ran through my head as I went running back to retrieve it. Had to wait for a couple of semi's and a few cars to pass. Imagined a crunched up bike from a semi running over it and/or busted frame/parts from the fall. Upon inspection, scuffed up grips/saddle, deep gouge mark on the non-drive side pedal, and...that was about it. Lucky.

[Mr. Pink]

I had a bike (fork mount) and wheel on my roof rack as I accelerated onto a busy rush hour Rt. 84 in Ct. to 70 mph. I heard a clunk, watched the wheel bounce once or twice in the fast lane behind me and veer off the road without getting hit (It was very busy). I stopped a few hundred yards down the line in a turnaround lane (for official use only), walked back on the inside shoulder, found the wheel resting upright on a bridge wall, totally undamaged, walked back, and took off without a state trooper finding me doing this stupid act. Jeez, I was lucky. But, I'll never trust a thule wheel holder without a little bungee cord as a safety strap again.

[Idris Icabod]

Had a buddy leave his wheel leant up next to his car after a ride that left from a coffee shop in a rather busy mall, he never found the wheel again.

I guess you got lucky!

Same buddy has also:

Had his daughter crush his Trek between their minivan and garage wall (teenage daughter was putting car back into garage and was pressing the brake and not the accelerator!!!), bike was leant up against far wall.

Had his wife drive his newly restored Basso (on roof rack) into garage door destroying fork

Leant another bike behind wife's minivan in garage, she backed over it.

He drove a Specialized road bike (on roof rack) into his garage.

After typing this I've realized that my friend is a fricking dumba$$!

[Mr. Pink]

Or has a drug problem.

[Louis]

I always lean wheels on the driver's side door.

[muchness]

A friend got a free Battaglin after the frame was dented in its trip over from England. He kept the parts and gave me the frame, which I promptly built and quite liked.

After an overnight century, we were loading bikes on the roof. I had some help as it was in the middle of the roof, facing backward.

A few minutes later at speed on the freeway, we hear some scraping and turn to watch it take flight.

The shifters and fork took the majority of the impact; the shifters were still fine, and the fork took another session in the alignment gauge. Happily the freeway was fairly vacant and nobody smashed it further.

It wasn't a sacred ride, thankfully. Mid 80s steel was happy to retake its intended shape.

My lesson was to always double check someone else's mounting job. The wheel strap had not been secured - at all.

[tiretrax]

Very early one morning, I picked up a friend who was visiting Dallas and drove him to a century ride. The bikes travelled inside my car. We were on the road for 10 minutes before he realized he forgot his front wheel. We went back to the place he was staying, and there it was behind a locked garage gate. I think he had to climb over a spike-topped gate in his kit and climb down the other side to retrieve his wheel.

[eippo1]

Can't say I've done a lot of the above. I have however driven an hour to meet a friend for a fairly technical mtn bike ride only to realize I forgot my helmet at home. So we ended up spending the afternoon at a bar instead, consuming calories instead of burning them.

I am also very good at leaving my lunch on the bench just inside my front door when I leave in the morning, much to my annoyance and my dog's joy.

[Peter P.]

I had a bike (fork mount) and wheel on my roof rack as I accelerated onto a busy rush hour Rt. 84 in Ct. to 70 mph....

Must be something about CT. I left a mountain bike ride in Meriden with my bike and front wheel on the roof rack. As I swung around on the entrance ramp of I-691 east, I watched my front wheel jettison from the roof rack and bounce merrily backwards down the highway. Somehow it avoided a certain death and I retrieved it.

Many years before that, I was going on a mountain bike ride with a friend. He mounted my Specialized Rockhopper with a steel fork onto his bike rack and we drove away. We traveled about 100ft. when my bike fell over on the roof rack with the only thing holding on being one fork dropout, which was now bent 90 degrees. I bent it back with a crescent wrench and we went about our business. The dropout failed about 2 years later.

[regularguy412]

BGI -- Bikes Go Inside.

Period.

Something I learned a few years ago -- thankfully, not at my expense:

Several racing buddies of mine were traveling to an out of state race in one of my buddy's van. It had a roof rack and held all three bikes. They took a shorter route than they have in the past. On this route, they had to pass under a viaduct built sometime around or after the Civil War. You guessed it: the bikes were high enough to clip the bottom of the viaduct. A couple of bikes suffered minor damage. The one in the center was a larger frame and the saddle/seat post hit the bridge pretty solidly. The bike was pretty well 'done'. The impact caused the roof rack to crush in (to the depth of a few inches) the top/rear section of the mini-van.

The van was repaired by the owner's car insurance. The bikes and the rack, however, were another story. The insurance coverage did not deem these items as 'cargo', as they were not within the confines of the vehicle. They were on the outside. If the bikes had been inside and there had been an accident. Any damage to the bikes would have been covered by the insurance. The insurance laws in your state may vary.

Ever since then, MY bikes go inside.

Mike in AR:beer:

[DerekG]

A few years ago at a race, I left my spare wheels against the wife's car.
As she pulled away, I heard them crunch under the tires and turned around to see them pushed into the grass where she was parked. Maybe it was the grassy parking area or the crazy durable Fulcrum wheels but they didn't have a mark on them and the rear wheel had just a slight wobble. Also, very lucky!

[tch]

Not a bike story, but many years ago I was transporting a canoe in northern Minnesota. I drove past a big opening on a large lake where the wind was blowing. Both bungee cords abruptly snapped as the wind caught the underside of the canoe, and it lifted off. Looking in the rear-view, I could plainly see a 17' Grumman flying vertical in the air about 12' above the ground. I watched in horror as it landed nose down right on the empty highway.

Luckily, it was late afternoon and no one was on the road either way for the ten minutes it took me to stop, reverse, gather myself and the canoe, and re-tie it (very thoroughly!) on top again.

The canoe? Seemingly unscathed. I never mentioned the incident to my co-workers and no one ever asked about anything. But I still shudder to think what that canoe would have done to a car/driver following me.

[oliver1850]

Left mine in the front yard the morning of the Grumpy Grind. I remembered it before I got 10 miles away, but it made me late enough that I missed the mass start and I had to ride by myself the whole day. I can do that without driving 130 miles. This sort of thing is why I mostly avoid events and just ride from home.

[tiretrax]

Left mine in the front yard the morning of the Grumpy Grind. I remembered it before I got 10 miles away, but it made me late enough that I missed the mass start and I had to ride by myself the whole day. I can do that without driving 130 miles. This sort of thing is why I mostly avoid events and just ride from home.

Sounds like that's how the Grumpy Grind got it's name.