Maaany years ago, probably 1990, spent a weekend with a prospective GF and we drove up to see her brother and his family in Perth, no doubt so they could check me out. Brother and his son were mountain bikers and I’d been presented as this fanatical mountain biker so off we went for a ride up a hill. I spotted an icy puddle and thought I’d do an impressive bunny-hop and smash the ice through with my front wheel. Except that the ice didnt smash and I decked extremely hard, hurting my wrist. How they laughed. The relationship petered out soon after.
Some time after that on a night ride I came down and stopped behind a group of bikers, put a foot out, found nothing and silently toppled sideways into a huge bramble bush. I couldn’t get out and it took four blokes pulling to extract me as I couldn’t help myself… once they had finished laughing.
And back in 1978 I was a student in Grenoble and I borrowed a road bike from an Iranian friend, hoping to find out why French people went and cycled up all the local hills at weekends. I thought I ought to shave my legs, which is what they all did apparently. Got to the top and discovered I had ground all the way up in the big ring – d’oh. Set off back down and was enjoying the speed when a Renault 5 crowded me on a bend, forcing me onto gravel. Both wheels skidded out, I smacked down on my side and slid over the edge, falling about 15 feet down a wall and fetching up against a sapling on a steep boulder slope. I heard screeching tyres and the whine of straight-cut gears in reverse and the car’s occupants appeared, looking down at me from the top of the wall. Passed the bike up, climbed up and refused a lift so I rode back to my Residence bleeding from knee, thigh, shoulder and head. Boy, did that smart in the shower.