worst moment on tour.

[jags]

just wondering what was your worse moment on tour.i know touring is not all sunshine and laugh's it does have it's dangerous moment's as well.
my worst experience was in france last year one of the lads had a very nasty fall resulting in him been taken to hospital,his bike total right off.
diden't do my head any good i packed 3 days later
i suppose when you tour in foreign land's you need a kool head doesn't do to let things get to you,it was a pity the way my tour turned out i was enjoying it very much up to that point.
so how about you folk's what was your worst moment.
cheers
jags.

 

[xilios]

Worst time was in spring 2007 (in Parga, Greece) when someone reached into our tent sometime after 03:00 while we were sleeping and removed our handle bar bags. We lost the camera with over 450 photos, 2 mobile phones and about 80 euros. All together about 220 euros but the pictures really hurt.
It took quite a while to get over this, kinda ruined our tour. Hope he rots in Hell

 

[Ricd11]

xilios - what a terrible experience, the person responsible is an absolute goit! I would have been most upset to lose the pictures i think!

 

[ComedyPilot]

I got a p*ncture on the A170 between Helmsley and Sutton Bank. Fixed it, with sarcastic motons driving past beeping and laughing. Put the wheel back on and set off. 10 yards later...pssssssssssssssssssttt....another p*ncture........same tyre.

Fixed it again, turned out the rim tape (which was a quite hard plastic) was curled over and slicing the tyre. Sure enough this got the motons with their dickhead horns all excited again.....!

 

[vernon]

Easter last year - doing a coast to coast. Things started going down hill in every sense of the word after reaching Hartside Cafe and finding it closed. The temperature started to drop as did the cloud base and my glycogen reserves. I got the hunger knock badly and had to wild camp a couple of miles short of Nenthead. The temperature dropped further through the night and I awoke thinking my cycling buddy was trying to wake me up only to find that I was violently shivering.

The low cloud persisted the next day and on reaching the summit of Crawleyside bank at Stanhope, the wind was so strong that we had to pedal downhill but not too fast as the visibility was so poor. The wind didn't clear the cloud/fog/mist all day until we reached the Tyne where I got a couple of punctures and my dynamo lighting packed up.

It was not the happiest of C2Cs

 

[jags]

wow some horror story's there folks,bet there's more to come.

 

[Haitch]

Riding down the James Cook Highway to Cairns in Australia, two years ago (sounds grand but it is only two narrow lanes, one in each direction). Nearly getting sucked under the wheels of a roadtrain every five minutes or so. A big black 4x4 drove past at about 50 mph with about half an inch to spare. Scared the matildas out of me. The caravan it was towing must have stuck out about six inches on either side. Bundled me and the bike off the road and nearly into the Pacific.

 

[ComedyPilot]

Reading other people's comments makes me realise that two p*nctures in 10 yards is maybe not the WORST that is going to happen to me on tour...?

 

[jags]

Reading other people's comments makes me realise that two p*nctures in 10 yards is maybe not the WORST that is going to happen to me on tour...?

agreed comedy pilot but it can ruin your day

 

[andym]

Mine was a lousy Crank Brothers pump which developed a fault which meant it woudn't pump up the tyre properly, so I kept getting pinch punctures. What made it worse was that I got a Zefal pump with a similar design (you switch between Presta and Shrader valves by rotating the head) which developed the same fault!

And then there was the time I took a wrong turn, carried on heading downhill on the basis that the path (I was off-road) was bound to lead somewhere (it didn't) and then had to push me and my kit back up the hill again in temperatures hitting 40...

 

[Tony]

I had ridden a delightful stretch of outback road on the Brockman Highway in Western Australia, gently rolling and superb surface, with the usual interesting signs like "next supplies 78km", when I turned onto a link road to the Vasse Highway. A screaming descent followed by a terrible uphill, then a long draqf towards Donnelly. There followed an awful set of "instalment hills", where the road went straight at a series of what felt like mountains in the temperate SW rainforest. The heavens had also opened, and it turned out to be one of the worst springs on record with snow on some of the higher hills and dead sheep everywhere.

I was in the first stages of hypothermia, swearing at the hills and the weather, missing my pedals on trying to clip in and pushing on the steep bits. I was about ready to put up my tent on the nearest patch of bog and crawl into my sleeping bag, and most probably die.

I was pushing past a lay by when someone called out "Hey, Tony!"

It was a Canuck I had met some days previously on the Indian Ocean coast, who had driven past me and realised I was in shoot state. He had found a place to pull over, and presented me with a mug of tea and a bowl of porridge. I cried.

I recovered enough to make my way another eight miles (it was a day of about 60) to a very posh lakeside resort where I was given superb treatment. Three days later, after spotting Jibi's graffito in a camping hut, I was greeted with a wailing horn as a little van came from the opposite direction, on my way to the Southern Ocean. It was the Canuck, waving and yelling as he went past, grinning hugely, giving me a thumbs up.

One of the worst moments of my touring. One of the best moments, too.

 

[Beardie]

I was on a CTC tour in 2006. We had to split up to various B&Bs at one overnight because there wasn't anywhere big enough for all of us.
Next morning, the leader turned up at the rendezvous point and had to tell us that one of the participants had died in his sleep. Worse still, his girlfriend was in bed next to him. He was only about 30 and the rest of the tour was a bit subdued without them and their two friends who accompanied her home.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I was on a CTC tour in 2006. We had to split up to various B&Bs at one overnight because there wasn't anywhere big enough for all of us.
Next morning, the leader turned up at the rendezvous point and had to tell us that one of the participants had died in his sleep. Worse still, his girlfriend was in bed next to him. He was only about 30 and the rest of the tour was a bit subdued without them and their two friends who accompanied her home.

Ever so slowly, my p*nctures creep further down the list........

 

[Kirstie]

I've never experienced anything as bad as some of the answers to this thread! My worst touring moment involved riding in a freak snowstorm in northumberland, being soaked to the skin and freezing cold, and when I couldn't get any colder or wetter a 4x4 drove at speed through a nearby icy puddle drenching us with icy water and blasting us with chunks of ice. I nearly cried.

Then there was the moment when I switched on my GPS at the start of a LEJOG and it told me I was 3,800 miles off course and should be in the middle of the sahara desert. I thought I'd lost the whole route but most of it was still there. It wasn't a nice moment though.

 

[jags]

reading through these post's you would wonder ,what the hell am i doing riding a bike ?
no it ain't all laugh's.