With all the wackiness going on here lately

[Cicli]

Whats the dumbest thing you will admit to doing on or with a bike.

We once spent an afternoon riding bikes off a second story roof into a swimming pool. We were about 14 or 15. It was a blast.

[m4rk540]

Learning to whip skid in torrential rain with 2 feet of flooding in intersections.

Riding home after an all day bike pub crawl. I hit a parked car at 3mph seconds after I rode off from the last bar. Miraculously, I rode home 14 miles but the ride may rank as the lowest moment of intellect in my life.

[Kontact]

A high school friend and I were riding our road bikes and joking around about hand positions. He crossed his arms to put his left hand on the right hood and vice versa, nearly lost control but managed to stay upright.

"Whoa, don't do that!"


Which is precisely what I did do, crashing to the pavement moments later.

[Bob Ross]

When I was 12 or 13 years old my friends Mark & Joe & I made an 8mm movie of staged bike crashes. We would find a cool set-up, define some camera angles, do a few practice runs, and then shoot the scene. Full-on crashes head first into trees, boulders, off of 3-4' high rock walls, seriously damaging stuff at reasonably high speeds. No helmets, no body armor, just t-shirts & jeans & sneakers.

I don't remember any of us getting hurt beyond a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises...but I did completely snap the steel steerer on my 1965 Murray!

[jtakeda]

Skitching a bus up battery.

Skitching a cable car up California. Both of these streets in SF

[tuxbailey]

While commuting to work one day on a MUP with light rain, I bunny hopped onto a foot bridge. Since it was a wood bridge and I was riding 700x23c, it didn't end well for me.

[weisan]

Two incidents come to mind.

First one: High school. Studying late at night. Got bored and decided to take the road bike downstairs to the basement parking garage and ride in a loop. Started off fine but I began to hallucinate that I was in the velodrome doing an individual pursuit...going faster and faster and....whoa....lost control, skidded 50 yards, picked myself up, felt a burning sensation on the entire left side of the body - scraped. Went home, rouse up the parents, got me inside the bath tub, turned on the shower head....whoa...JAWS! water turned into blood.

The second one is real short. JRA...just riding along, saw that a small piece of paper got caught in the front brake, reached down ...BAM! the next second, down on the ground. I have accidentally stuck one of my fingers into the spoke.
Ouch!

[Gabuyo]

I skitched up O'shaughnessy during an alleycat here in city of San Francisco. It's a winding uninterrupted 1 mile climb at about 5%. The jeep I was holding onto had no idea I was there (obviously) and was absolutely carving it. I was probably going +40mph uphill with like 2-3ft of space to work with in between the jeep and the right hand curb. I held on for about a minute total before letting go.

Strava segment analysis to prove it: https://www.strava.com/activities/699712799/analysis/3338/3498

[parris]

Does jumping onto a damp steel deck bridge at speed count?

[mbrtool]

Since the verb skitch was used in a previous reply. In the '50's we would hang out on a corner usually where there was a stop sign and the road was snow packed. We would grab onto the driver's rear bumper after he stopped and skitch as far as we could. Usually the driver would hear us laughing or see some of us tumbling down after we lost grip or hit a dry patch. Eventually he'd catch a red light and we'd all scramble. There's a phrase "youth is wasted on the young" or something like that; well we had a blast...I'm glad I did what I did when I was young.

Ray

[ultraman6970]

- Skitching buses, trucks and taxis.

- at 10 y/o my 20 inches caloi felt down a 25 meters cliff and got stuck like 2 meters from the pacific ocean, whats the dumb thing you wonder? one of the gang got the bad of taking a ride at the edge of the f... cliff, and we the idiot'sss said yes, back in the day we did not have helmets and I got lucky and quick enough to let the bike go or that would had been me at the bottom of the ocean. The oldest of the gang went down pick it up (15 y/o or so). Dude was like 6,3 already.

- Ride a velodrome backwards for like 5 minutes to get the hang of it and then do it no hands :D crashed at the 1st bank, was fun to see the whole team with coach, paramedics and managers cracking up :)

- might have other ones but dont remember right now :)

[John H.]

Speaking of skitching- Did any of you ever do actual snow skitching?

We did it when I was a kid in Illinois- When it snowed enough and the roads were plowed to a packed snow/ice surface.
We would wait in a hidden spot near a stop sign, when a vehicle stopper we would grab the bumper as long as we could. Sometimes for blocks.
Extra points for big vehicles, trucks, buses, multiple skitchers, etc..

And this was on foot- Not with a bike.

Looking back I can't even believe that we did this highly dangerous and stupid activity-
Mom would wonder how we wore the color off the front of our jeans-

Skitching a bus up battery.

Skitching a cable car up California. Both of these streets in SF

[Spaghetti Legs]

I have snow skitched on foot once - once.

Stupid bike tricks. Early 90’s, In the Navy on a port visit to Victoria BC, rented a mtb to ride around and rode it down a flight of about 30 steps to get to a bar.

Beer definitely involved in this one, opening day SF Giants, I think 1995, did a package deal with Shanghai Kelly’s on Polk St. Took a bus out to the game and back, rode my mtb back home to North Beach. Going through the Broadway tunnel on the sidewalk, bounced back and forth between the wall and guard rail like a pinball. Many scrapes and bruises but luckily nothing worse. Boy I did some stupid ****e back then.

[nesteel]

Got an important lesson in physics one night on my way home after a light rain. I still have a little strip of asphalt under the skin on my left hip.

[brewsmith]

The second one is real short. JRA...just riding along, saw that a small piece of paper got caught in the front brake, reached down ...BAM! the next second, down on the ground. I have accidentally stuck one of my fingers into the spoke.
Ouch!

This one was pretty much mine. Leaf caught in front spokes making sound like a helicopter. Reached a little too far in and my hand locked up the front wheel, pitching me on to the pavement. Luckily it was a low speed 'crash', but both pride and body suffered a blow that day.

[Dead Man]

world naked bike ride 2017

such a blast.. such a spectacle... after party was insane.. drugs and booze aflowin. had a 10 mile ride home at like 3am high n drunk af... wearin none but my road shoes n sunglasses on my head.....





.... yea

[d_douglas]

A high school friend and I were riding our road bikes and joking around about hand positions. He crossed his arms to put his left hand on the right hood and vice versa, nearly lost control but managed to stay upright.

"Whoa, don't do that!"


Which is precisely what I did do, crashing to the pavement moments later.

I did that very thing at about ten and my left arm has never been fully able to straighten since then!

[cachagua]

The year I was in language school in Monterey, I misjudged a bunny hop onto a curb and rode through an 88"X102" glass window.

I still have the jersey I was wearing. There's a repair on the left shoulder. Tiniest little insignificant nick on me -- don't think I even put a band-aid on it. I only made it halfway through, and ended up draped over the sill, giant sheets of glass guillotining down around me... the most impressive thing of all, actually, was the sound. We've all broken a beer bottle or something, but being right inside of it like that... that was an experience.

I looked up at the woman sitting shocked and horrified at the desk a few feet away, and grinned and said "Sorry 'bout that"... she didn't think it was funny. Weirdly, it was an insurance agency, but they didn't have any insurance. That's why I remember the dimensions -- I had to buy the new piece of glass. Which, looking back on it, is only fair.

Before that, there was blasting around downtown Atlanta at night, holding onto my best friend's right foot, which he held out to the side while riding his RD-350. I have been down some steep hills, but I've never gone faster than that on a bicycle. Helmet? Faugh! Hadn't even been invented yet.

This is a great thread, I *love* this! All of us sitting around seeing if we can out-stupid each other! I will say this: so far, I'm well in the lead.

[ultraman6970]

Anybody had been crazy enough to ride with ice in the street using the track bike? :) Worse going downhill :D Stuff we did back in the patagonia with the guys just because we were bored during winter.

[sw3759]

similar to cachagua's rd350 story.late 70's we rode dirt bikes mainly but had an old dept store bike so my buddy had a great idea to push me with his foot while he rode his RM80 and i'm sure we hit at least 50mph before that thing started to shake to the point i thought it was going break in half before i could stop.scared to $hit out me.lesson learned.

also climbing in colorado summer of 94' on some pedal the peaks thing.i'm removing my pearl izumi vest,got 1 arm out and while shifting to other arm the sti cables funneled the vest right into the front brake and locked my wheel in 2 seconds flat and jammed it all up so tight it took 10 minutes to get it unstuck.of course half dozen others saw this happen and had all kinds of remarks to let loose on me

[oldpotatoe]

Riding out of Camarillo, CA, beautiful day(1988)..looked down, saw QR on front wheel was loose, reached down while riding to tighten..hand went into spokes, over handlebars..guy in car behind me as I landed right on top of my head, said I looked like a cartoon character, with bike hooked to my left hand. Broke about 5-6 spokes, hand stuck between spokes and fork..failed fork all the way back past the down tube. Guy that worked for me came along about 5 minutes later, took me to work.

Still have the frame(Ciocc)...after I healed, took the frame and fork to a bike shop in Thousand Oaks..frame table..guy says, after seeing fork and hearing story, 'never sell this frame', straight as an arrow..one of the 3 best riding bikes I have ever had, even with water soluble decals..

:eek:

[Tony]

Years ago I fastened a power blower on a three speed and hit happy hour in Sacto.

[redir]

I see dumb and stupid as different things. IT's kind of stupid to ride a bike off a ramp into a pond or to skitch a ride and so on. But one of the dumbest things I ever did while riding was when I used wine corks as bar tape ends to hold the tape in, you know. And while riding one day I noticed that one of the corks was sticking out real far. So I had this brilliant idea that I would jut punch it back in. You can do the math on the rest of that story.

[Frankwurst]

Speaking of skitching- Did any of you ever do actual snow skitching?

We did it when I was a kid in Illinois- When it snowed enough and the roads were plowed to a packed snow/ice surface.
We would wait in a hidden spot near a stop sign, when a vehicle stopper we would grab the bumper as long as we could. Sometimes for blocks.
Extra points for big vehicles, trucks, buses, multiple skitchers, etc..

And this was on foot- Not with a bike.

Looking back I can't even believe that we did this highly dangerous and stupid activity-
Mom would wonder how we wore the color off the front of our jeans-

In Wisconsin you learn to crawl,walk,run and skitch. We would combine skitching with a game of chicken and see who could or would hang on the longest. Small dry spots of pavement would sometimes determine the winner/loser. That was good fun. I miss those days.:beer:

[John H.]

We were out of hand in the winter- Snowballing cars was also a fav-


In Wisconsin you learn to crawl,walk,run and skitch. We would combine skitching with a game of chicken and see who could or would hang on the longest. Small dry spots of pavement would sometimes determine the winner/loser. That was good fun. I miss those days.:beer:

[shovelhd]

Since the verb skitch was used in a previous reply. In the '50's we would hang out on a corner usually where there was a stop sign and the road was snow packed. We would grab onto the driver's rear bumper after he stopped and skitch as far as we could. Usually the driver would hear us laughing or see some of us tumbling down after we lost grip or hit a dry patch. Eventually he'd catch a red light and we'd all scramble. There's a phrase "youth is wasted on the young" or something like that; well we had a blast...I'm glad I did what I did when I was young.

Ray

Was the 70's for me, but that's how we got around town in the winter. You'd know who the rookies were. They grabbed the center of the bumper.

[bthornt]

[QUOTE=cachagua;2283005]The year I was in language school in Monterey, I misjudged a bunny hop onto a curb and rode through an 88"X102" glass window.

DLI?

[Bwana]

Riding my bike home from elementary school (had to have been 4th or 5th grade) and using my foot on the front tire to slow down going down a hill.

Shoe caught on the tire, jammed my foot into the fork and straight over the bars I went. :eek: Don't believe I had a helmet on...

[OperaLover]

Long smooth strip of roadway at the U of Hawai'i. Speed bumps all the way. gradual down hill. Hitting the speed bumps and catching air. Faster Faster Try to table top road bike. Cross bars on landing. Erase as patch of skin in the shape of my right tricep. Still have the scar. I was 28 yo, should have known better.

Another time I was on a borrowed Schwinn Continental. Steel rims. Log steep driveway straight down. In the rain. Came down like a shot. Rim brakes with suicide levers, as you can imagine, were totally ineffective. Shot across the street, hit the curb on the other side, flared the sidewalls on the rims, tender bits hit the top tube. Fortunately, no cars on the street and no sidewalk. Bushes "cushioned" my crash.

I was 11 or 12. My friend's dad from whom I "borrowed" the bike. Took a rubber mallet to the rims and they were good as new. "Schwinn approved!"

[marciero]

Riding out of Camarillo, CA, beautiful day(1988)..looked down, saw QR on front wheel was loose, reached down while riding to tighten..hand went into spokes, over handlebars..guy in car behind me as I landed right on top of my head, said I looked like a cartoon character, with bike hooked to my left hand. Broke about 5-6 spokes, hand stuck between spokes and fork..failed fork all the way back past the down tube. Guy that worked for me came along about 5 minutes later, took me to work.

Still have the frame(Ciocc)...after I healed, took the frame and fork to a bike shop in Thousand Oaks..frame table..guy says, after seeing fork and hearing story, 'never sell this frame', straight as an arrow..one of the 3 best riding bikes I have ever had, even with water soluble decals..

:eek:

For me was just thumb. Was used to turning on the blinky on the fork blade of our tandem by reaching down and grabbing the back of the fork blade with my thumb and the front with finger, since the "on" button is just the lens. On the tandem the blades are far apart and I had apparent gotten used to wrapping my thumb pretty far around the back side of the blade. When I tried this with the same light on my road bike my thumb went into the spokes behind the forkblade. Particularly painful with bladed spokes. There was blood but no crash.

My stupid kid thing was building a ramp and having my sisters arrange themselves on the ground so that I could jump over them on the bike. Amazing that no one got hurt!

[kevinvc]

I was doing my paper route as a kid. I was really sleepy and closed my eyes just for a few seconds... and rode my bike straight into the open tailgate of a parked pickup truck. I went over the bars and slid all the way to the cab of the truck. A guy mowing his lawn saw the whole thing, looked down and said "pendejo" just loud enough for me to hear.

I climbed out of the truck, picked up my papers that had gone flying, kicked my front wheel to make it straight enough to clear the fork, and continued on my route. Quite a few people got papers with blood smears that day.

[echelon_john]

Backyard Beer Criterium. One beer per ‘lap.’ I think it lasted 4 laps before the vomiting started.

Another time, a buddy and I stashed our bikes (Holdsworth, Pinarello) for what turned out to be a 4-hr boat outing with some girls we met at a convenience store on the South Shore. Literally left the bikes under a tree, got on a boat, drank beer, waterskied, etc. Came back that afternoon, got back on our bikes and rode home. Made perfect sense at the time.

[paredown]

I was doing my paper route as a kid. I was really sleepy and closed my eyes just for a few seconds... and rode my bike straight into the open tailgate of a parked pickup truck. I went over the bars and slid all the way to the cab of the truck. A guy mowing his lawn saw the whole thing, looked down and said "pendejo" just loud enough for me to hear.

I climbed out of the truck, picked up my papers that had gone flying, kicked my front wheel to make it straight enough to clear the fork, and continued on my route. Quite a few people got papers with blood smears that day.

Another paper route story--my brother was riding with me 'doubling' on the cross bar--with a load of papers in the carrier. I was balancing on the bar with both hands in my pockets (cold!), and the heel of my boot went into the front wheel.

The bike stopped dead, launching me, my brother and 70 or so papers... And I couldn't get my hands out, so it was faceplant time.

That hurt...

The funniest (because I was not the one who ended up bleeding) was my brother deciding to pop a wheelie on some old trash bike, and the handlebar stem pulled out. It was like a bad cartoon--for a moment he stayed up, with the 'oh ****' look, and then he bought the farm. Hit some nice crushed rock, so he was chewed up pretty bad...

[cachagua]

DLI?

Yes, took Mandarin there 1981-'82. Heavenly, Velotel-class riding in very direction around there. All the time, I still see the stretch of Highway 1 south to Big Sur on postcards and calendars, and go "Yeah, I used to ride that"...

So another episode from that same time: I rode inland on route 68, turned and went over the ridge into Carmel Valley (that's Laureles Grade, which is a standout piece of road by any measure). Turned right to come back toward the coast, and after a mile or two I spotted a softball-sized rock in the middle of the lane I was riding in. "Can't have that," I said to myself, "some bike rider could hit that and get hurt!" So, years of bicycle-Frisbee under my belt, I reached down and grabbed it without slowing, and tossed it into the ravine next to the road.

It didn't just land and stop, though, of course -- it bounced along parallel to my path, for just long enough so I could imagine what would happen if it bounced back out toward me. And of course it did. It wedged itself into my front spokes and rotated up behind the fork, and I did a nice aerial somersault and skidded to a stop, fairly unharmed.

Not much wrong with my bike, front wheel still turned okay... only it overlapped the downtube. My beautiful Serotta fork was pretzeled. I was sitting there scratching my head and wondering how I'd walk the 15 remaining miles home, in my cleats, carrying my bike, when a station wagon pulled over -- they'd watched the entire thing, and they thought they'd be taking me to the ER! So merely giving me a ride back to Monterey seemed like getting off easy, for them.

I still grab rocks out of the road, but I throw them a bit more backwards.

[kevinvc]

One more. I was on my first fully loaded bikecamping trip. During a hard climb, my right shoe kept unclipping. First mistake: that evening I tightened the tension on the pedal, but then got distracted with dinner and forgot to test it out.

Second mistake: the next morning I was in a rush and didn't secure the top clips of one of my rear panniers onto the rack. We started rolling out of the campground and when I went over a speedbump, the pannier came unhooked from the top of the rack, but was still attached by the hook at the bottom, so it swung around and hit my rear wheel. I was able to control the bike and get to the side of the road next to a pretty steep hill. As I stopped I went to put my foot down and realized I couldn't unclip. I did a slow cartwheeling tumble down the hill still clipped into the pedal and swinging the bike over me a couple of times before my foot came out of the shoe and my bike and I finished rolling to the bottom of the hill separately.

I was laughing at myself and the absurdity of the situation the whole way down but when I finally came to a stop, I looked up my friends were completely freaked out and a couple had stopped their car and run over to try to help. They were sure I must have, at a minimum, broken my ankle and destroyed my knee. As it turned out, I was a barely bumped or bruised and my bike and all of my gear were undamaged.

I wish someone had captured it on video since they claim it was one of the weirdest and more dramatic crashes they had ever seen.

[Ti Designs]

Backyard Beer Criterium. One beer per ‘lap.’ I think it lasted 4 laps before the vomiting started.


Sounds pretty normal to me.

We have drunken criteriums. There are two types, the ones where you ride your own bike and the ones where you have to switch bikes every lap. On my 40th birthday we had a drunken crit where all of the bikes were put into the pit (mostly commuting bikes), there was a LeMans style start where everybody staggered to the pit and grabbed a bike, then each lap we would have to switch bikes. It was suggested that you at least slow down before switching bikes, but not required. That was the night I found out that as badly as a woman's 3 speed corners, it sprints much, much worse.

[chuckroast]

I did the same thing as Old Potatoe. In 1989 I was rushing to get home and saw a loose QR on the front wheel. Reached down, in motion, to tighten, got my hand caught and over I went.

Had to go to the ER, sprained wrist and dislocated shoulder but the worst was they had to cut my wedding ring off.

Duh...

[RFC]

I did the same thing as Old Potatoe. In 1989 I was rushing to get home and saw a loose QR on the front wheel. Reached down, in motion, to tighten, got my hand caught and over I went.

Had to go to the ER, sprained wrist and dislocated shoulder but the worst was they had to cut my wedding ring off.

Duh...

That's one way to get rid of it.

[RFC]

At 11 or 12, my buddies and I would play gladiator riding our Stingrays and wacking each other with Whiffle Ball bats. Great fun!

[batman1425]

Speaking of skitching- Did any of you ever do actual snow skitching?

Bored in college during winter, pulled my buddy on skis for a good 10 miles behind another friends Chevy pickup.

Repeated the same exercise in the spring but friend on skis was in a office chair that we found in the basement of the house we were renting at the time.

[mtechnica]

One time I decided it would be a good idea to steer my bike by gripping just the stem. I was riding in traffic and bumped into the side of a parked car a bit, very nearly ate it. Don't try riding and firmly gripping your stem.