[Ape0r]

So, back in late April I ate it hard on my mountain bike. Came out with a busted nose and compression fractures on two vertebrae. My T7 and T8 vertebrae are permanently shifted laterally relative to eachother, ie, my spine is no longer, and will never again be, laterally straight. The doc says it won't cause any problems, so who cares!

Got out of my back brace today - celebrated by going for a 36 mile road ride.

I was cruising happily along at a crisp 22 or so mph, looking slightly down as I often do. I hear a rustling in the bushes just ahead and to my left, and look up just in time to SEE A FREAKING BUZZARD FLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! The bird was huge (by bird standards!), probably 18" long from beak to tail.

I hit it real hard with my handlebars and left shifter, thought I was going to go down for a second, but managed to hold on to some very shaky handlebars. I most definitely felt the bike jerk back under me, much like the feeling of hitting a deep creek at high speed on a mountain bike. I looked over my shoulder to see the bird flying out of a plume of feathers. I distinctly remember hearing it sound off when I whacked it.

Anyway, that's what I have - what's your funniest crash story?

 

[chuckf1047]

Recently I was flying out from the bushes when I crashed into the handlebars of a biker going along at a crisp 22 mph. Scared the feathers right out of me.

-Buzzie the freakin buzzard

 

[Andrea138]

At 15mph, I ran into my training partner's rear wheel because I was watching cows next to the road. It sucked.

 

[Ricko]

It didn't wreck be but it's an animal story non the less.

I was on the MTB and I rounded a blind turn into a short downhill and there was a LARGE raccoon sitting in the middle of the trail. All I had time to do was bunnyhop and I nailed him pretty good with my rear wheel on the way over (being the lousy bunnyhopper that I am). I stopped a little ways up and the varmint was standing there looking at me like he wanted to kick my A$$...so I proceeded to throw rocks and sticks at him to piss him off even more.

 

[BikeLV702]

Around here we get turkey's at all hours so they are inevitable on a ride. The other day I had a similar situation where a turkey and his whole f*^%ing family came out of the bushes right as i was cruisin along. Now this turkey was no normal turkey, noooo, his head easily reached my shoulder, thus i have named him turkzilla. I have yet to see him again but if I do, he may end up on the table come next November....

 

[Dajianshan]

I was hopping onto a sidewalk and the rear wheel bounced pretty hard off the curb...and I did an endo in front of a beautiful woman... and I'm married so I couldn't try to play up the severity of the fall as an ice breaker. sigh!

 

[Ape0r]

I was hopping onto a sidewalk and the rear wheel bounced pretty hard off the curb...and I did an endo in front of a beautiful woman... and I'm married so I couldn't try to play up the severity of the fall as an ice breaker. sigh!

Ha, I was riding with a friend when I had my bad one back in April. A cute blonde came upon us, and looked rather shocked at the amount of blood coming out of my nose. I tried to get him to ask for her number for me - I couldn't speak above a whisper. He didn't do it .

 

[chuckf1047]

Though not funny, this was my flukiest crash. Riding at night in Cambridge - going along at a decent clip - a piece of tree branch, a short but thick little stick 6" or so somehow flipped up into my front spokes; the tire must have caught it just right as it rolled over it, it lodged in the spokes crosswise and stopped the wheel dead in its tracks when it hit the front fork. The bike went up & flipped me right over the handlebars. opened up a gash obove my eye. I still remember some car honking with impatience as I gathered my stuff off the road. A couple of young women came along, all concerned, and offered to take me to their apartment nearby, but I turned them down - what a total nitwit! Know how bad decisions haunt you the rest of our life? Believe it or not, I still experience a great regret whenever I think back on it, and that was over 35 years ago!

 

[kreger]

had a sparrow hit my handlebar head on, full speed on both our parts. scratched the clear coat on the bar. the rest of the line i was in saw me jerk and saw something fall. little guy was obliterated.

 

[Leopold Porkstacker]

I was trackstanding at a stoplight right near a junior high school, as I have been doing successfully (well, the trackstand part, not the proximity to junior high schools) since about 1986, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I fell down and went SMACK!!! onto the asphalt!!! Split my right thumb open, broke the middle finger on my left hand (which still hurts these four or so months later), but my dignity was restored only by the teenage girls who cheered when I hopped back onto my bike and rode away, with blood spurting all over my bike and legs. I still don’t know why they weren’t at school, perhaps they were waiting for a bus to a different school or something—this was early in the morning.

 

[tomastomas]

Cut diagonally across some poorly oriented train tracks last summer. Didn't hurt very much, but I made a hell of a lot of noise during the ensuing faceplant. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't at rush hour in front of one of Vancouver's busier transit hubs. Scratched up my old dura-ace levers too!

 

[Tugboat]

I hit Santa going through a roundabout on a Xmas eve group ride. A bit of indecision as he decided to brake, then go, then had second thoughts and got on the brakes again. I got as far as the braking and then going again and missed the braking again. I must have been mesmerised by his red suit and wondering how he wasn't overheating in the Kiwi summer heat. He stayed upright but I went for a slide at about 35km/h. Surprisingly I got up without a scratch on me and the bike only had a scuff in the leather on the seat.

 

[PaulCL]

Cute blonde in a bikini top did me in. Yes, I am a happily married man. Yes, I was in my 30's and she was a mere teenager but I didn't know that until I hit the ground.

I came around a bend, she was walking along side of the road. I looked, she smiled, I smiled bigger while my front wheel went into a crack in the road. Psssft went the tire, down went Paul. Only my ego bruised. At least she came over, bent down and asked if I was OK. What a doofus.

 

[gowencm]

when i was ~14, I was talking to a friend behind me and ran into a parked car at a crisp 3mph.

 

[Akirasho]

... outrode the beam on my bike's light... right off the edge of a 15 foot levee down by the river. Almost cleared it at the bottom. Almost.

 

[funknuggets]

Once rolling through an intersection at maybe 10-13 mph... the other guy I was riding with ran over the edge of a bungee cord. The edge of it popped up and somehow got hooked in his spokes, whipped around, wrapped around the axle 3-4 times and the other end grabbed his fork and he came to an abrubt endo for about 8 feet, but strangely didn't lose it. It all happened really slow motion like...

 

[tindrum]

i had a friend who got frightened by a dog that started chasing him as he was riding. apprently the particular dog did this alot so it was more of an annoyance than a real threat. anyway he was on his way to work and forgot his work shoes had steel toes, since he had started a new job and used to just wear trainers. so to get the animal away from him as he passed he executed a tragically well-placed little kick and hit the poor thing between the eyes and it fell over dead. must have have hit him in precisely the wrong place. he was really broken up about it and carried the dog to the owner's house, apologized profusely, etc.



...that's not actually funny at all. hm.

 

[wipeout]

Yesterday, on my fixie commuting home, toe overlap bit me and I fell over trying to start a left-hand turn. Me and my big feet...

 

[mohair_chair]

I've only crashed once on my road bike, and there was nothing funny about it. But I've had uncountable crashes on my mountain bike. My most memorable was on the Porcupine Rim trail in Moab. Off the rim there's a section where you ride on dry river rock (smallish flat, slippery stones), and we were bombing it, barely on the edge of control, flirting with disaster, and having a great time. We passed a group of guys who had pulled off the trail for some reason. I still remember their expressions as we passed them: They were actually stunned, wide-eyed and mouths agape, as we came flying by.

Anyway, the trail section ends at a dropoff that can best be described as a cliff, where someone pushed a pile of of rocks over the edge. The rocks act as a staircase that you can ride, if you dare. This isn't a problem for experienced riders like we were, but it does present some challenges. Balance is crucial, and you also need to keep a certain amount of speed, because you can't really pedal. My buddy went down first, and I followed. I was doing fine, but I could tell that I was running out of speed. These were big steps, maybe a foot wide, but 1 to 2 foot drops from one to the next. I knew the game was up when I dropped my front wheel down one deep step and didn't have enough speed to carry it forward. I was effectively doing a nose wheelie, and it didn't take long for the back wheel to rotate over and I was crashing down on the rocks. The funny part was that I was unhurt, so I immediately got up, and could see that the guys who we had passed earlier were at the top of the stairs, again with the stunned looks on their faces. I shouted up to them, "Did my feet get over my head?" They looked at each other, then one guy said, "What????" I asked again, did my feet get over my head. One of them muttered "Yeah," and I threw up my arms in a victory sign and shouted "YES!" My buddy also joined the celebration. The guys at the top of the stairs were completely baffled. See, we had a sort of rule at the time that the only crashes you could brag about were the ones where your feet got above your head. Nobody cares if you slid out or ran into a tree. But if your feet get over your head, that's something to talk about.

 

[litespeedchick]

Sunday recovery ride w/ husband. From behind me he says "let's turn right up here." Looking at T-stop about 50 yards away, I say "OK". About 2 seconds later, he comes around me on the left, clears about 1/2 my bike, then turns right into a little squiggle of a side street I didn't notice. When he hits me I lean into him to stay upright. When he finally gets off me, he does it so fast I crash the way I'm leaning.

Heated discussion of who is at fault ensued. Obviously, he is at fault because:

1. The person who is not holding a line is always at fault.
2. The husband is always at fault.