One day last week I threw a broken spoke across the workshop to the scrap box (big cardboard box). It hit the edge, upended itself, then rattled around in one of the corrugations before sliding down until only the top inch or so of the spoke was still visible.

Anyone else got any good ones?

Came flying round a corner to see a branch across the trail at about 30cm height just before the next right hander. Managed to hop and hip at the same time landing perfectly around the corner. I have tried and tried since to just hop over stuff that height and can’t, never mind the instinctive mid air change of direction.

Flukes you could never repeat

I rode for 2 hours without falling off once.

____ _____

She’s married now. 🙁

I went over the bars (as always) on a really steep valley side in Eskdale. I managed to do a complete somersault and land on my feet. Much to everyone’s amusement. Someone said “****ing hell! I bet you couldn’t do that again!”

I did! About 100 yards further down the trail. Equally unintentionally. I reckon that’s my lot for that particular stunt now though

My goal against Physics in the annual Chemistry/Physics footy match back in 2002 is probably the greatest thing I will ever achieve.

I was playing left back and made a mistake and shouted offside which I think put off our goaly and Physics went 1 goal up.

Soon after I picked up the ball inside our half went round one man and kept going. I could see our winger pulling wide left but instead of passing I stepped inside their right back and brought the ball onto my favoured right foot.

By this time I was just outside their area and I could see our big striker saying he wanted the ball put in at the far post. So I thought I’d put the ball near as possible to the top right corner. I let it go and it sailed straight in !!! 🙂

i did a massive wheelie in the car park at haldon once. must have been about 10 pedal revolutions.

best since is about 2 and a bit.

Cut the sidewall on the front tyre of my hardtail last Sunday in my local forest.

Cut the sidewall on the front tyre of my full-suss this Sunday in my local forest.

Same bloody rock – pop out of the forest with a little air off the roots, throw the bike down onto the track and aim the front wheel into a rut and lean like hell. The wheel bites into the rut which pulls you through the turn. That’s how it normally works… both weeks I was spot on until my front tyre went into the rut and *BANG*

I didn’t bother to look last week as figured it was a fluke… but after doing it again yesterday I walked up for a look and there was a huge piece of quartz with an almost knife like edge right on the inside of the rut where I aim my front wheel. With my angle of lean it was perfect to cut the tyre… two weeks in a row… grrrr.

It took me a while but I got the rock out and threw it away… it looked to me like the piece of quartz had been broken/sheared to leave the sharp edge… probably by a horses metal shoe… grrrr, dog meat and glue!

Snowboarding last winter (on about the only decent powder day of a shocking season):

Off piste in Sainte Foy, if you head way out left there’s a nice line which eventually drops back to the resort. The bottom section is in the forest and is cut with lots of gullies, small drops, tangled thickets, etc. Very hard to ever go exactly the same way twice.

I was with a couple of newbies and showing off slightly. Dropped into one wee section, two drop-offs in a row, by this time going fast and somewhat off-balance. Alarmed to realise that I was in a small bowl with the only apparent way out being blocked by a fallen tree. Somehow managed to hop onto another fallen tree lying across that one, 50-50 it to the end, then land the (10ft+!) drop from the end of the tree. Cue round of applause from watching newbies.

Never, ever could I have pulled that off if I’d checked it out in advance and planned it!

When I was a kid, I tried to bunnyhop up a curb. I ended up smacking my front wheel into the curb and flipped over the handlebars. I landed with both feet on the floor, sitting on the front wheel, which balanced the bike.

When I was a kid, I tried to bunnyhop up a curb. I ended up smacking my front wheel into the curb and flipped over the handlebars. I landed with both feet on the floor, sitting on the front wheel, which balanced the bike.

Winner

Came flying round a corner to see a branch across the trail at about 30cm height just before the next right hander

Similar thing once on my road bike, pootling along in a world of my own (thinking about a new PS3 game at the time) a big limb of a tree fell right infront of me. Without really thinking about it I just hopped it, at least 9″ or so. Had I been thinking about it I’d have had no chance. Very odd. Would’ve been really nasty if it had landed on me!

Playing pool in the local, two tables next to each other in the pool room.

Cueing up to hit the white, completely mis-cue it and the white ball flys off the table, lands on the next one at exactly the point the guy there is taking his shot and pots his white ball into the middle pocket with my errant white one taking it’s place perfectly at the end of his cue.

The guy actually looked pretty mad and I think he was gonna make an issue of it except his mate and everyone else watching were pissing themselves laughing so he was stumped really.

Went over the bars a few years back (still pissed from night before) and bike landed in perfect ‘parked’ position.

A long,long time ago was out on the tiles with some mates. In a bar with a multi level layout. There happened to be a rather shapely young lady sat on a sofa on the lower level and we just happened to be on the raised area looking down.

Raised areas was about head high and with a standard height railing. Mates grabbed my legs and pretended they were going to throw me over whilst I lent over the handrail. Foolish (drunken really) me bent my arms and sailing over I went to end up sat in the sofa next to the girl. Mates very shocked as they thought they must have killed me. Girl shocked and did a double take. End result was no-one hurt and only the mates, the girl and me seemed to have noticed.

I once brewed some homebrewed beer that was actualy paletable!

Around 2000, when I was just getting back into MTBing after a few years off to court the booze and marinade in women, I too managed to go OTB on a steep rooty embankment, and somehow managed a somersault in mid air, landing on my feet with a little jog to the bottom of the hill. Sadly, no one else was there to witness my skill.

Bad fluke: i was hammering down the A6 on my road bike at about 30 miles an hour, when a cat leapt off a ~5ft high verge and made a direct hit into my front wheel, punching it out from beneath me. I got thrown over the bars and the car behind me had to screech to a halt.

(It was much like that video doing the rounds last week of a deer in South Africa pinning a mtber, only less impressive)

when I visited my sister in the states years ago we went to the local basketball court. first thing i did was (using both hands, in a very uncool sort of underarm throw) score a basket from the halfway line.

On the basketball theme,

I used to play 5 aside in a sportshall, after us a bunch of lads played basketball. Once during the change over the basket ball landed near me. I casually lobbed it backwards over my should from just inside the half. Everyone was well impressed when it dropped in! After that they always tried to get me to play!

[I changed a set of Avid brake ads once without swearing/kicking the cat

Last winter the car park at work was covered in snow so I handbrake-turned into the approximate location of a parking space (as you do).

Imagine my delight when the snow thawed at lunchtime and my car was positioned perfectly between the lines 😉

Not a Fluke as such but…

I bought an old mini after passing my test ‘J’ Reg so 1970 ish.
Was a good car till I forgot to brake parking it in Dads garage, put it straight under the workbench and smashed the bonnet. Got a second hand one from a breakers yard. Drove it around for a while with a sky blue bonnet (car was red).
Went to a do in South End, Essex (The Gold Mine) Parked next to a Blue Mini with a red bonnet guy was sitting inside,having only just pulled-up himself. Did a swap there and then using an adjustable spanner my mate had on his keyring.
Smiles all round.!

4 balls to go in a cricket league game, we needed 2 to win, field is in saving the single bar a sweeper on each side. I decided to come down the track to the bowler intending to chip it over the in field out to the sweeper, we’d get at least one and if i didn’t hit it too well we might be able to push two and win the game.

But the bowler saw me and pulled it down short, and I sort of played a slog sweep instead flipping the ball over square leg and all the way for 6.

At which point my team mates go mad because I was on 96 at the time and needed at least 4 for my first first team league century.

Never made another……..

I’m REALLY bad at pretty much all ball sports. I particularly hate golf and have only played a couple of times on municipal type courses and only then under great sufferance.

One of said occasions was on a mate’s stag weekend where he had a spur of the moment urge to have a go at the local council 9-hole course.

Morning after the night before, deeply hungover yet somehow managed to bag a hole in one off the third tee (rebound off a tree as I remember!).

Complete and utter fluke as I barely know one end of a golf club from the other and wasn’t even able to focus at the time.

The rest of the round was so bad I still lost!

4 balls to go in a cricket league game…

Continuing the cricket theme, I, despite being pretty rubbish, managed to take 5 wickets in the space of 4 overs in a league match. You know it’s your day when you bowl a rank wide long-hop, and the batsman inside edges it onto the stumps.

High on Mutzig and Peroni, in Bar Rhodos Morzine I plonked the two balls left on the pool table completely randomly, and said that one in that pocket and that one there, I then proceeded to pot both balls in the correct pockets and the white up the other end as a bonus. Everyone thought I was some kind of pool wizard, untill I went on to play a proper game like a one handed chimp and lost horribly.

I’m REALLY bad at pretty much all ball sports. I particularly hate golf and have only played a couple of times on municipal type courses and only then under great sufferance.

I too am shocking at golf, played a round with some mates on a stag do in Germany of all places. Think we were about half way round, all morning everytime I had hit the ball it had barely left the ground. So I was about 40 yards from the tee, I figure on current form it would probably take about a 5 iron to go that far! I hit the sweetest iron shot you have ever seen and the ball goes flying through the green. Followed by the ping – ping – ping sound of it bouncing of the trees behind the green. The ball comes flying back out of the trees straight towards my mate standing beside me and hits him square in the gut!

Friend threw a water balloon at me from quite close, had my hands in my jacket pockets, I spun around to protect myself from it and in the process caught it in my shorts pocket, got to throw it back at him.

I played golf with my dad one time and he hit a ball off the tee that never got more than 5 inches off the ground. It then hit the red concrete ball marking the ladies tee, and went about 1000ft vertically into the air. Except not quite vertical, because where I was standing behind him spotting his drive, I barely had to move an inch before it came back down into my waiting hands. So i handed it back to him and invited him to try it again.

Once got a whole in one playing crazy golf. Could never repeat that, it was one of those, up the ramp onto a platform then up another ramp over a gap and into a hole in a flower pot 3 feet away. I just hit it too hard, hit the first ramp, launched it straight into the hole. Beautiful. went on to lose the game all the same.

Riding in the Alps last summer, pulled a perfect stoppie round a particuarly nasty (LH) hairpin to discover the trail had washed out and was non existant. Back wheel carried on round until it was about perpendicular to the trail at which point the front was rapidly sliding down the hill. Decided to step off (flat pedals rock!)and ended up dropping the 8′ down onto the next traverse. Landed on my feet, looked up, caught my bike which had completed the 180 turn so it was pointing in the right direction, got back on and rode away without pausing. Mates were gobsmacked!

Playing table tennis years ago, I served and the ball caught the very edge of the table on my side and shot up almost to ceiling height, then came down on the other side and did the same again, shooting onto the floor. It looked rather more cool than it sounds when described.

I also did the basketball one at school, scoring from the opposite end of the court. Was gutted I wasn’t given at least 10 points for that (but understandable as the teacher was Scottish).

Aged 9ish, the PE teacher was showing us how to throw the javelin.

First go, I broke the school record by a fair bit, 38m distance iirc. Never managed to get even get it over 20m ever again again despite being picked to represent the school for a while afterwards.