Any One Ever Have an Embarring Moment While Cycling....?

Irish_Army01

....Well Mine was yesterday evening while on my way to work..


I got to Terenure Rd E junction to the traffic lights and had slowed to stop as there was a queue of traffic..I "tried " to disengage my Shoes from my Clets but for some reason, they wouldn't release!!

I fell to the Curb side still connected to the pedals( Thank God) as a dozen or so Cars and Buses looked on !!!

I just got up, didn't look up and continued on my merry way:D

Any one else with similar Stories/ Circumstances ?

DBCyc

My only cleat spill so far occurred as I was passing a bus. I had to brake suddenly and forgot to clip out and keeled over, but luckily against a stationary bus!

It would have been fairly embarrassing if the bus was not there mind! But it was quite amusing to see the look on the face of the passenger who was asleep on the window that I banged off...ha ha!

From reading this forum, it seems to happen to everyone so thats comforting. Although the majority of witnesses to these incidents on the road would be non cleat wearing cyclists, so they must be fairly confused when they watch a cyclist seemingly collapsing for no reason

alfalad

Irish_Army01 wrote: »

....Well Mine was yesterday evening while on my way to work..


I got to Terenure Rd E junction to the traffic lights and had slowed to stop as there was a queue of traffic..I "tried " to disengage my Shoes from my Clets but for some reason, they wouldn't release!!

I fell to the Curb side still connected to the pedals( Thank God) as a dozen or so Cars and Buses looked on !!!

I just got up, didn't look up and continued on my merry way:D

Any one else with similar Stories/ Circumstances ?

I've fallen over a dozen times!!:) Worst was at a food stop on a charity cycle in Clare in front of 30 seasoned cyclists! Or in a pedestrian square in Hungry last year, 200 people watched me fall over in slow motion while my bro's nearly wet themselves!!

Canis Lupus

Last month I forgot I had changed to easiest gear and was stopped at traffic lights in front of everyone.

Decided to take off with power (but bear in mind the easy gear) and whoosh, like a motorbike the back wheel took off, I had one foot still unclipped which hit the ground and I did a 360 type wheelie thing.

Looked a complete tard but still gave myself a chuckle even if it also scared me. Light bikes do crazy stuff.

72hundred

DBCyc wrote: »

witnesses to these incidents on the road would be non cleat wearing cyclists, so they must be fairly confused when they watch a cyclist seemingly collapsing for no reason

HAHAHA, never thought of that before!

triv88

Irish_Army01 wrote: »

....Well Mine was yesterday evening while on my way to work..


I got to Terenure Rd E junction to the traffic lights and had slowed to stop as there was a queue of traffic..I "tried " to disengage my Shoes from my Clets but for some reason, they wouldn't release!!

I fell to the Curb side still connected to the pedals( Thank God) as a dozen or so Cars and Buses looked on !!!

I just got up, didn't look up and continued on my merry way:D

Any one else with similar Stories/ Circumstances ?

Ha! I tried cleats for the first time today . Fell down on the side of the road when i was stopping as lights (forgot i had cleats on), al il bit embarassing,few cars going by and all that.

Five minutes later i'm going by a school with lots of young mummies and school children milling about left right and center , and I see the lolipop lady ahead of me ....i had about 50 yards to try and get my feet free of the shackles,tryed harder and harder and more forcefully the nearer i got,until i eventually had to slowly fall over in slow motion in front of everyone.

****ing hate cleats,never using them again:mad:

zzzzzzzz

triv88 wrote: »

****ing hate cleats,never using them again:mad:

In fairness, everyone falls over once or twice.

Practice clipping in and out in your hallway and you'll get the hang of it. Once you get used to them you'll never go back

triv88

i'll give them one more go then tomorrow so:D

wowy

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054924525

This may remind some of the users here (myself included) of stories that we shared that, in retrospect, we should have kept very quiet about!

The tax man

Prologue stage of a two day schoolboy race in Clare. Everyone was going off at 1 minute intervals.I come to the start but had a cleat malfunction,the slot on the cleat had closed in from walking on it too much. Pleaded with the start official to give me a chance to fix it. Quick scramble for a flat blade screwdriver to re-open the slot and finally got my feet tightly strapped onto the pedals.

My minute slot was gone so I was let off at the next minute mark. Everyone at the start knew this,everyone along the course didn't. All I could see were people looking at their watches or stop watches and then looking back at me with a "tut tut" shake of their head. They all thought I was a minute down already,while only halfway up a climb. I felt like shouting "I'm not a minute down" all the way up that bloody climb.

Plenty of falls with feet in cleats and straps at lunch stops while with the CTC. Always made the mistake of leaning against walls etc with my outside foot strapped in waiting for everyone to mount up and next thing...TIMBER!!!:D

abcdggs

triv88 wrote: »

Ha! I tried cleats for the first time today . Fell down on the side of the road when i was stopping as lights (forgot i had cleats on), al il bit embarassing,few cars going by and all that.

Five minutes later i'm going by a school with lots of young mummies and school children milling about left right and center , and I see the lolipop lady ahead of me ....i had about 50 yards to try and get my feet free of the shackles,tryed harder and harder and more forcefully the nearer i got,until i eventually had to slowly fall over in slow motion in front of everyone.

****ing hate cleats,never using them again:mad:

I jus have to say hilarious, the embarrassment is worth that story. cant wait to start my clipless life for my first slow mo fall story...

Mint Sauce

again, one that involves cleats, approaching a red light, decided i would stay clipped in to try and get a quick getaway when they switched green, slowed down and spotting a traffic bollard to hold on to whist stationary, to my surprise it turned out to be one of those bollards with the single spring base, bollard leant to one side under my weight once passed my centre of gravity, on my side i landed, i didn't even bother looking up to see the reaction from the stationary traffic or the pedestians waiting to cross

dave.obrien

was on my usual commute to town and approaching my local village. this was the first time i had ridden my road bike with clipless pedals for the trip, normally i use a hybrid with toe clips and straps. so, out of habit, i go to try to pull my foot out backwards at the last minute, with just the one car in front of me(mother and 2 kids), and naturally face planted the tarmac. the window of the car rolls down, and i hear the woman shout at me "new pedals?!" as it transpired, she too was a cyclist, and had suffered the same fate as me before. her kids were less sympathetic, still have nightmares of chuckling toddlers pointing and laughing...

Highway_To_Hell

@triv88, stick with the cleats, it will very quickly become second nature to unclip when coming to junctions. I would say there are very few cyclists who havent had a cleat instance.

Vélo

aidan.offbeat wrote: »

In fairness, everyone falls over once or twice.

Practice clipping in and out in your hallway and you'll get the hang of it. Once you get used to them you'll never go back

I had my 1st one in the house while practising. The next and last one was going up a steep hill and went to change gear but it wouldn't and I just fell over.

Signal_ rabbit

Riding down a quiet country lane with another cyclist and he was commenting on my rack pod (I was riding my mountain bike at the time), I looked behind to see what he was talking about and ended up in the dyke because i wasn't looking where i was going. He thought it hysterical.

Git101

Many years ago I pulled up to a shop on Cork St, Dublin. I didn't have a lock with me so I decided that it would be a great idea to pull the quick release lever on my front wheel and leave the wheel in place. I figured this would be an interesting surprise for any passing thief who decided to ride off on my pride and joy. Yes, you've guessed it, when I came out of the shop I had forgotten what I'd done (short term memory issues ) anyway, I picked up the bike and spun it quickly in the opposite direction to head on my merry way when the wheel shot off and bounced across the road, luckly missing the cars travelling in both directions. I must have looked a pretty sight to the passing motorists standing there with my one wheeled bike :pac:

Cabaal

Didn't happen to me but the lad was beside me, years back I was cycling on a bypass around where I live that was still under construction.

As it was still under construction there was of course material left around the place still, myself and one my friends went for a cycle on part of it that was 80% finished and we were chatting away next min I looked forward and then to the side again and he was gone.

Turned out he was looking towards me as we were talking and he didn't see the big pile of sand that he cycled straight into at full speed, he wasn't turn but was funny to see him one sec and gone the next

Cabaal

Git101 wrote: »

Many years ago I pulled up to a shop on Cork St, Dublin. I didn't have a lock with me so I decided that it would be a great idea to pull the quick release lever on my front wheel and leave the wheel in place. I figured this would be an interesting surprise for any passing thief who decided to ride off on my pride and joy. Yes, you've guessed it,....<SNIP>

Ouch,
Years back in school I've seen lads take off the quick release on people's bikes, never ended well when they picked up their bike later and jumped off a footpath....ouch indeed! :eek:

Civilian_Target

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Last month I forgot I had changed to easiest gear and was stopped at traffic lights in front of everyone.

Decided to take off with power (but bear in mind the easy gear) and whoosh, like a motorbike the back wheel took off, I had one foot still unclipped which hit the ground and I did a 360 type wheelie thing.

Looked a complete tard but still gave myself a chuckle even if it also scared me. Light bikes do crazy stuff.

Haha, I can sympathise with this. A couple of years ago I was taking off from a t-junction in Belfast on a maybe 8-10% uphill incline from a sidestreet onto the main road. I saw my chance to go and powered up hard - so much so that I entered the main street on only my back wheel, in a massive, badly controlled wheelie, with panniers! One car beeped in appreciation, another one stopped, and several pedestrians were pissing themselves laughing!

Thomas_S_Hunterson

I almost died inside when I went to sit (sideways) on my top tube and failed to allow for the U-lock in my back pocket. The bike just kind of slid out from under me.

Landing awkwardly on my back with a crowd of people around was not my finest moment

Alkers

Had a few non-cleat related ones, everyone has had one or two of them.
One was on the way to college in UCD, it was a Wednesday I think and I was trying to beat my record time in because as usual I was running late for a 9am start. On the Monday of that week I had actually been stopped by a Garda on a bike for breaking the lights turning right into UCD. Anyways, lashing it along in the middle of the road with traffic stopped on both sides of the road, lights go red, keep pelting along untill out of the corner of my eye I see same Garda on bike coming the opposite direction. Jam on the brakes and do a big stoppie, front wheel literally stops 1cm from the white line, face on the Gard was priceless but he didn't say a thing.
Another was pelting down a black trail in whistler, come flying out of a berm into a jump that's under the cable car bringing people up the hill, get that horrible feeling of not having pulled up hard enough and my rear wheel goes way higher than my front wheel. Managed not to crash too badly but still got a big cheer from everyone on the cable car. - Class place you should go!

rottenhat

During a century a few years ago I was riding along chatting with a mate - the road was one of those where there's a four or five inch drop off the side into the undergrowth, and I slipped off the road, went another hundred yards downhill, the handlebars bouncing around too much to brake, before wiping out in a patch of brambles.

This might have been marginally less embarrassing if I hadn't spent the previous five minutes slagging him off for an incident the week before where he'd yanked his brand-new brakes a little too hard and gone straight over the bars (never seen a man pull an endo on a touring bike before).

RobFowl

A good few years ago got a secondhand set of ally wheels. The hubs were as rough as hell so cleared them out changed the bearings and re greased them.
Didn't realise that they were so old they has imperial bearings which I relaced with metric ones.
Half way up howth they simply ground the surfaces and seized completely. Had to walk 8 miles nome in cycling shoes carrying the bike on my shoulder.

Chips Lovell

First race of the year and I called a dangerous bend. Then promptly crashed myself.

Twin-go

Hired a bike with a few friends in Belgium. For some reason the brake cables for front and rear were the reverse of my own bike back home. We were going along at a far speed when we came to a pedestrian crossing. We all had to brake hard. I ended going streight out over the bars. All I remember is hearing the gasps of the onlookers the crashing to the road. Road Rash on both hands (no gloves), chin and knees. But the red face hurt the most.

Caroline_ie

2 weeks ago ... 'Look, look, I can track stand' ...


ouch ...