Not only did I crash my bike but I managed to do it spectacularly as well.
Gawd this hasn’t happened to me since I was a teen. Yesterday as I was returning from work with my bicycle, I had one absolutely cinematic bicycle fall, the kinds of which that you just assume have been specifically prepared to make the stuntman have the most impressive drop.
I was on the large area in front of the Opera House and I have my umbrella hanged on the steering handle of the bike. The umbrella was one of those cheap plastic/aluminum ones where they have a hook at the end, so I had put it there to free my hands and I was holding it steady with my hand on top. In retrospect, such close proximity to the wheel was not the best place for an umbrella to be.
As these thing always do, the inevitable happened and at some point the tip of the umbrella managed to get too near to the spinning spokes and “sucked” in to the point where in jammed next to the fork. I didn’t really see that though. What I did see, after a short “I can see my house from up here” moment, was the ground coming up to meet me and say hello. I even did a satisfying grunt when I was ejected from my seat just because the jerk was so sudden.
I managed to land approx 1 meter away from my bike
Fortunately my years as a bumbling youth have conditioned me to fall as gracefully as possible and I managed to put my hands down first which meant that my right wrist took a nice strain, and then fell flat on my chest, which all things considered is not a bad falling location due to the amount of area the force can spread to. The initial pain was minimal and nothing was sprained or broken but I still have lingering pain on my wrist and chest now. Could have been worse I guess.
Of course such an event could not turn out without victims and in this case it was the unfortunate umbrella who dared to investigate the shiny-spinny thingies. After I managed to extricate it from its stuck location, I ended up with a vaguelly umbrella-shaped object which whished to become the greek letter Sigma “Σ” in the next life.
Once I had fallen, I turned around to shake my head at my misbehaving bicycle and noticed that a family around 50 meters ago had stopped to look at the undoubtedly humorous event. They didn’t look for long and moved along as soon as I got up. At this point some young guy approached me to ask (I guess) if I was ok. As I was a bit too stunned to decode his German at that point that is what I assume he was saying, although in retrospect I think he may have been saying “That was fucking awesome dude“. I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so I said what was on the top of my mind at that moment:
“EPIC Fail!”
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Hilarious, but only because it happened to someone else beside me.
Seriously, I'm glad you are all right.
Where's the photo's?
Unfortunately I was not carrying a camera at the time and I didn't notice if anyone was filming me. Merphy's law demands that someone was however which means that sooner or later a youtube video will surface 🙂
I am not laughing either 🙂
YOWCH!
Ah yes, nothing quite like the cinematic bike fall! Hearing about it almost makes me want to fix up my bike and start riding again just to have another. My favorite of all time and by far the most painful involved me flying over the handlebars (in slow motion of course) and landing hard in loose gravel which became embedded in both hands and both knees. As bad as it hurt to remove all that gravel, the first thought that went through my mind afterward was how cool it must have looked to anyone lucky enough to see it. Unfortunately, it was dark and nobody was around.
For a close second, I have to go back to my childhood. I was racing down the street on my BMX dirt bike and turned back to wave at a friend behind me. I ran into the back of a parked car hard enough that my front tire stuck under its rear bumper, flew over the handlebars, landing on the hood of the car. This time, I had the added bonus of hitting my nuts on the handlebar as I flew past. Hurt like hell, but my friend got a great laugh out of it.
vjack, remind me to bring a camera if we ever go bike riding together. lol
I've had two bike accidents but neither as spectacular as yours or db0's.
Heh, that was nothing compared to other events I had in my youth, like the time I managed, due to broken brakes, to smash onto the ledge of a single-tree field (the thing that hold the earth it) and went flying ahead, barely missing the actual tree with my face by a few centimeters. Or the time I managed to fall into an empty pool and then my whole bike crashed on top of my wrist.
Ah, fun 🙂
LOL about the nuts hit 🙂
At least you didn't break an arm!
My worst wipeout so far was hitting a pedestrian who jumped in front of me at BU. It was quite pathetic actually, I tore my glove and rolled around on the ground like a turtle on its back, thanks to my way-too-heavy backpack. Yours sounds quite spectacular!