Post your most inventive way to crash here

Sircrashalot

New Member
SO the other day I found an entirely new and yet very painful (to body and ego) way to crash. I want to provide others the opportunity to laugh at me, and thought other people might have unexpectedly discovered other clever ways to be an idiot that they may want to share.

SO here's mine:

Been riding with clipless only a few months. Have already done the "forgot I was clipped in" flop about a million times. Have already done the waiting on the trail and too lazy to unclip so ride up and grab hold of a branch, only to have it snap off the tree and crash, crash.

Sunday was heading out for the first time in a long while with my good friend Tommy Crash. We decided to hit 6MR from the ranger station side. Got saddled up in the parking lot, and started to head out of the ranger station lot towards the trail. I clipped in, and since I haven;t been riding in a bit, proceeded to wheelie to get the feel for the 'ol Heckler back. Didn't have the feel. Wheelie got too tall, forgot to grab some rear brake and instead went to take my feet off the pedals to abort. Since my feet remained firmly attached to the pedals I went straight over backwards, in extreme slow motion, for what felt like at least an hour of total helplessness and full knowledge that I was about to hit pavement, hard, and landed flatly on my camelpack & back of my head!!!
At least it happened right in the lot so all could see. No words to explain what a JACKASS I am.
Anyhow, on a serious note, were it not for my helmet, elbow guards and gloves it would have been a hospital trip for a concussion and probably a shattered left elbow and bloodied right palm. Instead, I scraped up what little pride I had left and rode all day! I checked my Garmin data but couldnt find where the elevation went up a coupple feet and then rapidly back down.
:duh:
 
J

Jeff

Guest
Oh, I like your technique- very inventive indeed!


My personal favorite was while riding my dirtbike many years ago on the train tracks in Stanhope/Port Morris. As you know if you've spent a lot of time on them, boy scouts will often go on big group hiking expeditions to pick up trash or whatever it is that they do.

I had been riding up and down the tracks for a while working on my speed through the whoops (right above the giant hillclimbs, for those familiar with the area). At that time of year the foliage was very thick and made for a nice block of my vision ahead, right before the rhythm section.

As fate would have it, a massive group of boyscouts had just emerged from one of the side trails and onto the tracks. Obviously they heard me coming, but for some reason (whether they had a grudge with dirtbikers or just did not want to move), refused to get out of the trail. I caught sight of them too late to stop, so I tightened my grip and got ready to hold on and try to maneuver the swarm- and nearly did!

Towards the end of the pack, I got a bit squirrely and literally hit one of them. I later found out that he was fine and just tumbled to the side. I, however, proceeded to end the crash in full showboat fashion. When I clipped him, it shot me in the direction of the cliff to my left, and while trying to avoid the chasm of death, managed to hit a fallen tree and flip several times to eventually stop under a warm blanket of searing hot exhaust pipe. To make a long story short, the scout was fine and I was able to ride away with no more than some burns and bruises, and what now makes for an interesting story.
 

clutch

New Member
[..]Wheelie got too tall, forgot to grab some rear brake and instead went to take my feet off the pedals to abort. Since my feet remained firmly attached to the pedals I went straight over backwards, in extreme slow motion, for what felt like at least an hour of total helplessness and full knowledge that I was about to hit pavement, hard, and landed flatly on my camelpack & back of my head!!!
[..]

I did the same thing while riding with one of my buddies and his girlfriend. The only difference is my crash was caused by a loose shoe cleat. I went to jump of the back of the bike and my right foot wouldn't unclip. It's kind of an odd feeling laying on your back with your bike still attached to your feet. It turns out a camelbak acts as a decent spine protector.

hmmm.....I'm going to have to think about another crash method, I was planning to post that method when I read the thread title, but you scooped me.
 

bonefishjake

Strong like bull, smart like tractor
Team MTBNJ Halter's
i have two:

1) i have also been victimized by the "too much wheelie" thing and landed flat on my back. no camelbak to cushion the fall but i did have a helmet on. everytime i wheelie now, that's in the back of my mind.

2) while riding the tourne the other day, the first time in almost two years, i rode the big rock roller that used to have a transition at the bottom. upon realizing that said transition was removed i tried in vain to wheelie out. unfortunately i realized far too late that the transition at the bottom was way more necessary than i thought and trying to wheelie out right before it only put my front wheel in a better position to put me OTB and land me on my head.
 

bonefishjake

Strong like bull, smart like tractor
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I thought for sure one of these would be the attacking tree story:D

whatever walt, you jerk. :D

ok, fine, #3.

i hit "the only tree" in lewis morris...not even LM, on patriots path...on the maiden voyage with my mary. i jumped a couple roots, landed sketchy and slammed into it. i fell over then was run over by norm.
 

Sircrashalot

New Member
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

My crash was SO worth the humiliation since it gave birth to this thread..........:rofl::rofl::rofl: keep 'em coming!
 

bonefishjake

Strong like bull, smart like tractor
Team MTBNJ Halter's
oh, it gets even better. i completely taco'd my front wheel to the point the bike was unrideble so i had to walk back to my scrambler. upon arriving at the scrambler, i realized that i left my lights on so the battery was dead. so after i get it jumped, it still wouldn't start. at that point i realized that i neglected to check the milage and realized that, oh, guess what, you're out of gas too you fool. ugh, not one of my better days.
 

Frank

Sasquatch
Tried to jump a ramped up log pile on my S/S with Lobster Claw gloves on for the first time. Evidently I always put my right index finger on the brake lever because half way through the jump I saw my right hand in front of my face. Needless to say I ended up in a twisted pile with handle bars in my ribs and a nasty lump on my knee. It was still funny and I no longer will use those gloves.
 

GratefulRider

Active Member
I folded my front fork while descending what I refer to as the staircase at Round Valley a few years ago. that was pretty painful and somewhat costly to repair. I figure it happened from repeatedly packing down the fork until there was nothing left. The break was right at the crown. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever rode a Manitou.

How timely a topic...I'm not sure if this counts though...My friend emailed me this morning that he crashed this past weekend at Fruita. He was wearing Pearl Izumi Boa shoes, which I guess have an interesting lacing mechanism. The mechanism failed and his foot came out of the shoe and he off the bike. I am waiting on the pictures his wife took, they sound pretty good. In addition to a broken shoe, he ended up with a flat tire, fat lip, and some gravel in the eye.
 

anrothar

entirely thrilled
my most innovative and ground breaking crash:

learning how to dirt jump. got the wee little ones down and moved on to the slightly less wee little ones in steady rythm. cleaned the first one no problem. pumped the transition, launched off the second one, realized i wasn't gonna make it, bailed, landed on my feet in the ditch. then came the crash. the bike, which i had launched gracefully and dramatically skyward, had amazingly not broken free of gravity and now came hurtling back towards earth at the speed of a falling 35 lb bmx bike. only problem was i happened to be standing between the bike and the earth, so it nudged me out of the way by hitting me in the back of the head with a 12mm solid axle, which then caused me to crash to the ground.

i was about to take another run at them when my friend sal asked me if that was blood he saw on my shirt. i touched the top of my head, and sure enough, some blood. rinsed it out, tied a napkin to the wound with my dredlocks, and kept riding. i later discovered a crescent shaped dent in my skull. sweet.
 

crash_in_nj

New Member
While I never made a crescent shaped dent in my skull, I did a pretty good job with one crash when I was in high school. I was riding a Huffy 20" BMX style bike down the side of the highway, carrying a couple of bottles of gatorade and a movie. I coasted down a large hill, had lots of speed. At the bottom I was slowing down and tried to pedal again. Too soon. Once I broke the bike out of freewheel, the pedals spun so fast it threw my knee into the handlebar and sent me flying. I got a bunch of stitches in my knee, which was cut so deep that you could see little bits of fat in the wound. They said if I popped the stiches I was going to need a skin graft. Did I mention that back then, gatorade came in glass bottles? After high school, I noticed that my finger hurt when I tapped it a certain way. After some poking and prodding, I pulled a nice little sliver of glass out. It seems pretty funny now... A few years later I did the same thing while bombing a hill on my sister's mtb. I managed to hold on that time, and only taco'd the rear wheel.
 

743power

Shop: Bicycle Pro
Shop Keep
my most innovative and ground breaking crash:

learning how to dirt jump. got the wee little ones down and moved on to the slightly less wee little ones in steady rythm. cleaned the first one no problem. pumped the transition, launched off the second one, realized i wasn't gonna make it, bailed, landed on my feet in the ditch. then came the crash. the bike, which i had launched gracefully and dramatically skyward, had amazingly not broken free of gravity and now came hurtling back towards earth at the speed of a falling 35 lb bmx bike. only problem was i happened to be standing between the bike and the earth, so it nudged me out of the way by hitting me in the back of the head with a 12mm solid axle, which then caused me to crash to the ground.

i was about to take another run at them when my friend sal asked me if that was blood he saw on my shirt. i touched the top of my head, and sure enough, some blood. rinsed it out, tied a napkin to the wound with my dredlocks, and kept riding. i later discovered a crescent shaped dent in my skull. sweet.


haha, that's really funny because the EXACT same thing happened to a buddy of mine back in high school. To this day he has a witch's moon scar on the back of his head.

edit -

I usually only crash doing stupid stuff (ie. not actually riding)

One time when the casino skatepark was still open in asbury park, I was sitting on my bike, on the deck of the bowl, I stood up for a sec and went to sit back down. Unfortunately, when I went to put my left foot down on the deck, I missed the deck, went into the open air above the bowl and awkwardly fell all 7 feet to the bottom. That gave me quite the nice bruise on my hip for a month.
 
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Engignar

New Member
I had a pretty innovative and extremely painful crash yesterday. I am in the process of learning clipless, which I will use on the road but not on the trail. I recently moved, and now live close to a park which has some dirt jumps on a trail that some local kids built. On my ride yesterday I decided to ride the trail (clipless), and felt pretty good, so I start hitting the jumps, which are a set of three - two tabletops and then a gapper. After hitting the first two tabletops a few times I'm starting to feel confident, I make another loop and hit the first jump nice and smooth and clean the second one as well. I am pointed right at the gapper now, which has a very short run up. In that split second I say OK lets go for it. The moment the front wheel leaves the ramp I know I am in trouble, my brain has just enough time to go through the following sequence: Say Oh Boy! out loud, and think to myself you are still clipped and there is nothing you can do! Well, my front wheel did not even clear the landing and landed in the ditch, I proceed to do my best flying squirrel, except I am still attached to the bike which is falling into the ditch. I manage to land directly on the back of my shoulder (tuck and roll!) and my head, while pulling the bike out of the ditch another ten feet and then having it land on tip of me in pretzel form with my legs. I had the wind knocked out of me and I think it is time for a new bell...and man is my shoulder stiff and swollen today.
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
when I rode bmx, for about a month period, i got in the horrible habit of when I looped out during a manual, I would hold on to the bars. This would cause me to shoot the bike foward and fall on my knees. After getting pissed more than a few times, I eventually reverted back to ditching the bike properly.
 

ArmyOfNone

Well-Known Member
Not sure if i have shared this yet.

When I was a youth, my friends and I had built up a jump that ran out into a parking lot. At the other end of said lot was a dumpster. Hit the jump and lost my foot on the pedal. I went careening out of control into the dumpster.

My mom must have been watching bc she came running out screaming. She took me and my bike inside not to play for the rest of the day. My chain had fallen off also as a result. I insisted that we stop to fix the chain. She replied dont worry about your *!@*@ chain, your lucky you didnt *(*#@! die!. I laughed, then almost got my ass beat. :rofl:
 

BiknBen

Well-Known Member
Cmon guys...where's the video?

I did this last saturday at Clayton. Trying to shoot video of my daughter. I only have a pocket camera so I was riding one-handed.

I ended up with a headache to go along with my scrapes and bruizes. I'll use this to explain that $350 helmet-cam purchase to the wife. :cool:



The bell you hear is on my bars...Not in my head!!! :rofl:
 

Sircrashalot

New Member
SOme of the tales of the 'youthful' crashes have brought back a painful memory. Used to ride a lot of BMX and mostly in the construction site one neighborhood over. Lotsa mud sometimes and being a kid a loose chain was no biggie until it got really annoying. So, often would get some gunk built up and lose a chain off the sprocket. Happened so often that I got good at being able to hang it back on the front sprocket without ever stopping or getting off the bike.
Once, riding home on the street, I lost the chain. As usual I went to put it right back on. Well, in my contorting myself, the 'down pedal' foot slipped off the pedal causing the 'up pedal' foot to immediately obey gravity and crank forward, grabbing my pointer and middle fingers between the chain & front sprocket, resulting in immediate and very intense pain. Now stuck bent over, my total focus was on trying to get my mangled fingers free. This resulted in my not noticing that I was headed directly for my neighbors car, which my head hit at the same time as the front of my bike. My fingers stayed put between the chain & sprocket until I hit the ground. I can still feel the spot on the pointer finger where there is some meat missing!:mad2:
 

bonefishjake

Strong like bull, smart like tractor
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Cmon guys...where's the video?

I did this last saturday at Clayton. Trying to shoot video of my daughter. I only have a pocket camera so I was riding one-handed.

The bell you hear is on my bars...Not in my head!!! :rofl:

ben, that is awesome. quote of the day: "ohhh...daddy crashed. i can't do that one handed. ow."
 
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