Knew I was going to do this someday...

The old horizontal track stand... It took me four years of riding with clipless pedals before I did mine. It was coming off of a red light with a bunch of cars behind me.

Does anyone remember the old "Laugh-In" TV show? Do you remember the little guy on the tricycle (Arte Johnson?)? He rides, comes to a stop, then he falls over. Well, that's me. And when I do it, I defy gravity, because I fall over in slow motion (to prolong the embarrassment.).

I got blown over on a track stand last winter. It took soooooooooooo long to actually hit the ground. Welcome to the club! 😉

I rode past a pair of sunglasses on the shoulder of the road, immediately slowed down, went onto the sidewalk to turn around, but cut it so tight that I was teetering. Forgot about the recent addition of clipless (why do they call them that) pedals and went down on my wrist. Hurt a lot, but managed the 40km ride back home with the glasses in my pocket and a sore wrist.

Rode up to a neighbors house, stopped next to his grill, and fell into it.
Luckily I got away without getting burned. :p

shrkewin said:

As I was cresting the hill I changed gears and the chain came off. I noticed that there was no traffic around me as I coasted to the side of the road and stopped. I then realized that I had not unclipped! It takes a long long time to slowly fall over into a ditch beside the road. I was unhurt except for my pride. I was very lucky because I could have fallen the other way, into the road, and there could have been cars coming. Has this ever happened to you?

Yup! When I first put on my clipless pedals. I was riding behind a chain link fence that was behind a softball team sitting on the bench. I fell over and my helmet clicked on the fence all the way to the ground. I layed there feeling stupid, looking up at a bunch of dudes looking back at me. Ha, never fell again....not yet anyway.

Unbelievable. I just did my first track stand today. Was leaving a SAG rest area, doing a metric century, and clipped in with my left foot on a slight hill to the left. Swung the right leg over and bamm. On the ground. Nothing hurt but damn embarrasing. The saving grace is that there was about 20 people around me, and one of the more senior riders asked for anyone who hadn't done that to please speak up. Needless to say noone did. I guess if you ride enough all the stupid things are bound to happen.

I've done it three times. First time was when I first got clipless pedals. I was testing them out in my kitchen, trying to support myself between the counters. At the time I didn't have a trainer. I managed to slide from between the counters onto the open floor and then fall straight down. Second time was in a parking lot later that day practicing. A car came flying around a corner and I hit the brakes to miss it. Slowed down too much and fell over. Last time was a few weeks ago. First ride with my new bike. I was climbing a big hill and cross chaining. The chain skipped, I lost momentum, and fell over. That time though, I tried to land on me to avoid scratching the brand new bike 🙂.

-Matt

I did it on a friday evening on a busy street with a bunch of bars.... needless to say i tipped in slow motion in front of trillions of hot chicks sipping martinis at happy hour... at least thats how i remember it.

I was half way through my ride when I was rolling to a stop to take a breather before heading back in. I unclipped the left and reaaally slowly leaned to the right! What a mess... nothing broken. Thankfully no one around.🙄

shrkewin said:

As I was cresting the hill I changed gears and the chain came off. I noticed that there was no traffic around me as I coasted to the side of the road and stopped. I then realized that I had not unclipped! It takes a long long time to slowly fall over into a ditch beside the road. I was unhurt except for my pride. I was very lucky because I could have fallen the other way, into the road, and there could have been cars coming. Has this ever happened to you?

when this happens don't stop - just keep spinning and shift your front deraileur and it should pop straight back on - no dismount. then later you can check if your settings are correct.

I did it while strapped on. Next time I will try to pedal while horizontal to see if I can actually recover vertivality by getting the bike to move forward.

On a second thougt, I rather not do it.

huhenio said:

I did it while strapped on. Next time I will try to pedal while horizontal to see if I can actually recover vertivality by getting the bike to move forward.

On a second thougt, I rather not do it.

if you pedal really quickly you will burn through the bottom bracket and eventually create forward momentum and finish off your ride rolling on the bracket....yeaaah!

cali-largeguy said:

Unbelievable. I just did my first track stand today. Was leaving a SAG rest area, doing a metric century, and clipped in with my left foot on a slight hill to the left. Swung the right leg over and bamm. On the ground. Nothing hurt but damn embarrasing. The saving grace is that there was about 20 people around me, and one of the more senior riders asked for anyone who hadn't done that to please speak up. Needless to say noone did. I guess if you ride enough all the stupid things are bound to happen.

I managed to do this with clips, once, though it took some doing. Coming back from a long ride at rush hour, I had to cut through stationary traffic at a light to get in the left lane for a turn. With between 20 and 30 drivers watching, I pulled up next to the lead car, unclipped my right foot, and toppled slowly over to the left.

Only time I topped it was riding technical trails a couple of weeks ago. My pedal clips were too tight and I didn't have the right Allen wrench to fix them. Couldn't unclip in time to dab. I hit the ground while still in climbing position so often I stopped thinking of it as falling and began to think of it as slowly pounding the mountain flat with my body.

^^ tomorrow I will try that ...

I know there a a lot of good reasons to use the clipless stuff, but you have just mention the one really big reason I do not use them.

never actually hit the ground....have come very close several times but a foot magically flew out and hit pavement.

Never on the road

BUT ...

I DID IT ON A TRAINER!!!!

I leaned off the bike to grab something and TIMBER!!! right into a corner nightstand and into the corner of the wall ...

What's worse, I had just gotten the pedals and they were so stinkin' tight to my cleat, that I was lodged against the wall and could hardly get my feet out to get up.

I had the Xbox hooked up and pulled that thing right off the TV stand also. ...

Friggin indoor train wreck ...

[font=Comic Sans MS]I am stationed in San Joaquin Valley, California--no rain, 95 deg F for 8.5 months; rain and constant fog/mist for 3.5 months. Off on my commute for what was to be the early and unanticipated end of the dry season at lunch time that day, I'm riding my bike home onto the normally hard-packed farm road--actually enjoying the cool mist--when I grind to a slow motion stop in about 2.5 inches of hard-packed turned mud... and too shocked to come free. .. The satisfaction of thinking that "at least no one saw me go down" is nullified when I ride into my neighborhood covered in mud. Their speculation worse than the reality... [/font]