daftest thing you have done regarding cycling

[deckertim]

When I was about 13 years old, I rode down Martin's Hill in Bromley for a dare and invented downhill mountain biking.

For those that don't know it this is a very hilly park. Earlier in the day we had been riding on an easier part of the park where there is a valley. Down one side then up the other and it wasn't too bad, but of course teenage enthusiasm meant we started looking for a more difficult challenge. It ended up with me accepting the dare to cycle down the steepest part of the hill.

You can see it here on this view, and there now appears to be a track going downhill from the war memorial. Who knows, but maybe I started this!!

http://tinyurl.com/martins-hill

Anyway I set off on my Raleigh clunker and in microseconds realised that 1970 braking technology wasn't up to much (leather brake blocks and chrome wheels). I gave up trying and just held on for dear life. When I reached the path that crosses the hill from left to right I took off. BIG AIR..... Of course on a modern full suss mountain bike when the bike landed I wouln't have felt a thing, but this was a bike made from industrial gas pipes with nothing yielding on it whatsover. my crotch region therefore took the full force of my heavy landing and I cannot tell you how much this hurt. The most amazing thing at all, was the fact that I managed to hold on and didn't fall off or crash. I like to think, I was the hero of the hour, but I suspect my friends just thought I was mad, particularly as nobody else did this descent.

Next time I am out for a ride in that neck of the woods, I must go and see if the hill is really as steep and scary as it seemed that day. Or maybe I should keep this as a memory of my youth.

To this day, I am still a bit of a wimp when it comes to going down hills on a bike

 

[Globalti]

Back in the seventies I actually INVENTED the mountain bike so you have me to thank for that. I hacksawed the tiny chainring off my brother's Triang trike, drilled holes in it and bolted it to the inside of the chainring on my Raleigh 10 speed. There was no changer so I had to stop and move it over by hand. I took the modified bike down to Jesmond Dene and set off up a steep path, cranks spinning away as I marvelled at the hill-climbing ability. Quite soon I was gasping and amazed that I could be so out of breath for so little leg effort. Next thing the mild steel chainring collapsed catastrophically and my experiment ended. It was good while it lasted though.

On a motorbike; I once rode my Honda CD175 all the way from John O'Groats to Newcastle on Tyne in one long day, having given up my solitary motorcycle tour of Scotland in disgust and depression at the weather. Got home absolutely exhausted to my parents' brand new house in Jesmond, the garden was still a builder's quagmire of wet mud. Parked the bike on the path and went in for food and a hot bath. Later on, bathed and dry and warm in clean clothes I went out to shift the bike into the garage. My younger sister was watching as I straddled the bike, my foot missed the edge of the path and I toppled gracefully into the deep mud where I lay trapped under the bike yelling at her to help me lift if off as liquid mud filled my clothes. Oh how the family laughed at me.

 

[tyred]

Towards the end of the refurbishment of my 1939 Elswick, I wired up the early 1950s dynamo and lamps and went down the (unlit) road in the dark to see how useful they were. The tail light is mounted on the chainstay and because I had been to the shop early in the day on the bike and had a large Carradice bag on the saddle, I couldn't see a direct line to the tail light so freewheeling down a hill, standing up and peering back over the top of the saddlebag looking at the red reflection on the road, i promptly veered straight into a hawthorn hedge.

 

[ColinJ]

None of your tales will top that of the Norwegian lad I spoke to at university who had cycled down a ski jump for a dare when he was a kid. He spent a year having his broken body bolted back together ... (The bike was a write-off!)

 

[superbadger]

Well be careful what you say....... a few years back i had a bike stolen and didn't have much cash to get a new replacement, so i got a 2nd hand mountain bike for £20 (yes it was a pig.... Only 4 gears worked out of 18!!!) It was beyond help to be honest but it do me for 2 month while i save for a new bike!!!! I got the new bike but still used the 'pig' in awful weather for a run to the shops etc.... (never locking it up! secretly hoping it would be stolen! but alas even thieves have standards!!!) My GF commented to me 'when the hell are you gonna get rid of that piece of crap?'... My reply- 'I gonna ride it till the wheels fall off hun!' THE VERY NEXT DAY!!!!! Yep..... doing about 20mph and the back wheel bolts just ripped off!!!! The GF still laughs bout it... Gave the bike to some scrap-man.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Almost embarrassed to admit this but I rode 50 miles with the rear tyre not properly fitted to the rim! I thought the bumping was the higher tyre presure and crap road surface

 

[apollo179]

I went to the local shop on my bike and because I had forgotten my lock I disengaged both brake cables. Just in case somebody wanted to ride off on it. Got back on the bike and drifted off home again. Straight in to my garage door!!

That isnt the best anti theft measure ive ever heard of.
When i forget my lock i hide bike in some bushes.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

That isnt the best anti theft measure ive ever heard of.
When i forget my lock i hide bike in some bushes.

Of course most LBS's have a plethora of bushes near by don't they! Have you seen the thread title BTW?

 

[Gixxerman]

Nothing of note in my second coming to bikes that started 3 years ago, apart from clipless moments X2.

However from my youth in the 80's.

1) Riding through town without lights one night (yes I know, but we all did it back then). Heard a loud voice behind me shout "Where's your lights?". Without checking who it was, I shouted my then favourite response of "Up my arse, can't you see the wick hanging out!" and carried on my way. Sometime later PC Bob Cherry arrived at my house. Yep you guessed it; It was he who had shouted, and I had been recognised. After many appologies etc. I was let off with a ticking off by the copper and my dad. But my dad did see the funny side of it when the copper had left though.
2) Standing on the peddles riding up Walesby hill and the chain broke, resulting in my meat and two veg smashing into the crossbar. I coasted to a stop and just fell off the bike, and lay rolling around on the road in agony. Then an old lady in a Morris Minor stopped and asked me if I was alright and could she help. I politely declined her assistance.
3) Made the classic mistake with the old style brake blocks. They have an open end and closed end. You are supposed to fit them the correct way round (closed end facing forwards), else as soon as you apply the brakes, the brake block rubbers shoot out. I discovered this and also at the same time that nettles / bramble briers sting a bit when going head first into them.
4) Going to school one morning, late as normal, I was taking my usual short cut through the common. I was fairly flying down the path and was approaching the gate back onto the road. It was then that I noticed some workmen waving at me and shouting at me to stop. I thought "bog off old farts, watch this, I'm coming through!". So without lessening my pace, I went for the gate with workmen jumping out the way in all directions, promptly followed by me flying backwards off the bike as if hitting some invisable rubber wall and the bike carrying on for some distance before crashing into a wall. I landed and my back with a hell of a thump, not knowing what the hell had occurred. The workmen ran over to me and once they see that I was stunned, but otherwise OK start falling about laughing. What had happened was that they were putting some new fence posts in and had some nylon string streched across the gate that there were using as a toe-line, and I had failed to see it.
5) My mum was throwing out and old ironing board. I saw it and immediately got the idea that my mates and me could use it as a ramp to jump push bikes over. So with the aid of some bricks, we made a nice ramp and had us some great fun. However, the more we used it over the next few weeks, the braver we got and the more the speed and jump angle increased. Well my mate always had to be the bestest, and he had a bit of a screw lose to boot. So he set the angle to then unprecedented levels, and took a mighty run-up at it. The assembled masses of kids stood in awe and wonder, expecting something monumental was going to happen. It did. Well he hit the ramp at suicidal speed, and took off like a jetplane reaching 25 feet high or so, but alas, the board toppled slightly, and he left it at a bit of an angle, heading straight for a large tree. Both him and the bike landed it the top of the tree and became lodged, much the the amusment and appreciation of the assembled audience, who cheered and aplauded loudly. The bike, along with my mates arm, and some teeth all broken. The ramp jumping ceased after that.

 

[CopperCyclist]

About three weeks after I started cycling, I saw an old man ahead of me on my commute, pedalling dead slowly - a cadence of 30 perhaps. I was barely catching him, so I sped up. He looked about 60-70 wearing a big tweed coat, cap - the stereo typical old man.

I barely gained on him for ages, and kept having to go faster and faster to catch him, not understanding why I wasn't overtaking him easily. I knew I has only just started cycling (my average speed over the commute was 13-14mph back then), but my ego said I really should be able to catch an OAP pedalling tha slowly.

When I eventually caught up and overtook him, I saw he was on an electric bike, and quite happily pottling away with virtually zero effort at aout 20mph. Worst part was, now I'd flown past him, I had to maintain that speed as we were on a towpath, with nowhere for me to go. By the time I got home I was more tired than I had ever been.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I've found that there's a direct link between the weight of the contents of the shopping basket and what I can cycle home with. If it's too heavy in the shop, I won't make it up the hills

Panniers are what you need. I once cycled a couple of miles home with 48 cans of Stella distributed around 4 panniers. This was at around 10pm when I already had a fair bit of booze sloshing around my system ...

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Panniers are what you need. I once cycled a couple of miles home with 48 cans of Stella distributed around 4 panniers. This was at around 10pm when I already had a fair bit of booze sloshing around my system ...

Panniers seconded. The amount of stuff you can load on a Brompton between the front folding basket and rear rack bag is astounding. If you had front and rear panniers on a normal bike it'd be even more!

 

[XmisterIS]

Two spring to mind:

Firstly, when I was about 13, I set up a jump opposite a huge patch of stinging nettles which I was hoping to jump over. You can fill in the rest of the story for yourselves ...

Secondly, when I was a student, I rode home from a friend's digs along a dual carriageway when I was too pissed and stoned to actually stand up. I was ok once the bike was moving though, just stopping was the problem. My mate (who was also pissed and stoned) had to hold the bike while I got onto it. We were both laughing so much that it took what seemed like an hour. My mate had to stop to pee because he was laughing so much.

 

[Black Sheep]

My exploits mainly took place on old coal pits, growing up in Barnsley, having been born the year of the miners strike most of them had been closed by the time I was old enough to roam on my own on a bike (normally with my older brother) and we used to go mountain biking on the old spoil (slag) heap which had big mounds of slag heaped up to stop people driving cars onto them.

some people could ride over bits of the slag piles, i never had, until one day I had ventured a little too close to some british coal workmen who were on the main pit (still dismantling / surveying) who chased me off the spoil heap in their landrover.

managed to get over the slag mound and off the pit into the woods that day!


the only other exploit is that of my dad, the previous owner of my road bike.

he was riding down the side of sandal castle, wakefield. By side, i mean down into the moat and fell off into a tree growing up from the bottom of the moat

the bike caught in the tree, leaving my dad hanging upside down by his toe clips

 

[dan_bo]

As a 17 year old I purchased for the princely sum of fifteen quid an old butchers' bike complete with a dirty great big basket cage, full mudguards and, of course, rod brakes. For it's maiden voyage I decided to take it to my mates who lived a couple of miles away at the bottom of a good sized hill. In the pissing down rain.


Got to the brow of said hill- traffic fairly heavy- and thought to myself "i'll start with the brakes now as they're poor at the best of times".

Pulled the brakes. nothing.

Pulled the brakes harder. nowt. by this time I was in the traffic gaining speed as the hill got steeper.

hmm.

I know! I'll press against the tyre with the sole of my shoe!


No. Full, heavy guage mudguards put paid to that. Lights at the bottom 300 yards away are on red. loads of cars. I'm going faster.

Thank whoever that I was wearing my cherry red Doc's. If I'd have kicked the front wheel in with my trainies on I would have lost toes.


Thankfully the woman in the big peugeot behind me had the prescence of mind to hang back a bit so she didn't run me over as I lay broken on the floor, on top of the bike. She did look mighty shaken though.

I then had to carry the 40lb of broken, twisted bike home in the rain with a smashed elbow and a buggered knee.

I think that bike's still in the cellar where I left it.