Post your Pratfalls: Dumb or embarassing things you've done.

After reading the Dumb Questions thread and some others, I thought of a bunch of dumb things I've done, dumb questions I've asked people, and other embarassing behavior. I forget which thread I read it in, but I recall one rider mentioning putting a foot down on the low side of a curb and going over. Post your foot-in-the-oil, forgetting to put it in gear, and giant sneeze in the helmet stories.


After filling up at the pump, I rolled up to the squeegee bucket/paper towel/trash can between the pumps and grabbed some paper towels to wipe the gas off my tank. I didn't realize how close I was to the knee-high metal post, and nailed it with my left knee as soon as I started rolling away. It was enough force pull me about halfway off the bike, which resulted in me dumping the clutch and blipping the throttle at the same time. I guess I must have recovered the clutch or locked the brake and killed it, but somehow I stayed on the bike, and upright. Good enough recovery, but then I realized that all the other customers and a bunch of older usuals were staring at the asshole on the motorcycle revving his engine and running into things all early in the morning.

I used to ride a 1979 XS400 that I couldn't get properly tuned to hold an idle. It died a lot, usually when the red light would change to green. It wasn't super easy to start, either, so I have a lot of memories of kicking a contrary old rat bike with a line of traffic behind me.

And the occasional standing at a green light going BWWAAAAAAAA because I didn't have it in gear.

I have forgotten to put up my kickstand on more occasions than I'd like to admit to.

It causes no damage, but the sound of it scraping against the road makes me feel like one of those wannabes on the movie Wild Hogs every time.

Every time I miss a 1 - 2 shift and end up in neutral, or sometimes a 5 - 6 hitting a false neutral, etc. The cause is just laziness and not following through all the way with the toe. But it happens, and I sure get a little red every time I do it.

I realized that I didn't have the rear break covered at about 10 o'clock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0_1PaMea7A

Last winter I spend about an hour riding my klr around on a frozen river. After I was done getting my kicks, a guy flagged me down and calmly explained that the ice was so thin he was afraid to even walk on it.

Once I was so excited to get where I was going that I forgot to put the kickstand down...

Why just the other day, on my first group ride from adv, I grab a handful of front brake as the rider in front of me slides out on the dirt road.

I of course join him down in the gravel but on the opposite side of the road. Since I went over the handlebars and landed some distance from the bike on my back, lots of folks had the time to calmly park their bikes in a sane manner and mosey over and start asking me really tough questions like "Are you OK?"

Figuring that stunt was going to be hard to top, I went ahead and rode on home before I stiffened up. Pretty hurting unit by the time I got home. Noticed the next day my front wheel really didn't point forward, but the "hit by truck" feeling I had from about the waist up seemed to mask any handling issues.

There have been plenty of embarrassing moments but I choose not to remember them ! The most recent one that I can remember is riding down a fairly steep hill on a tight, eroded trail that we used to have access to. It was a little wet and there was a sharp right turn at the bottom of the hill around a log so I was going slow enough to need the clutch pulled in a little. Well I was on the front brake slightly and figured the front end would hold around the log, instead it slid out from under me and I proceeded to do this slow awkward roll onto my head and over this log into a ditch. Luckily I was following my friend so he didn't get to watch it, but he saw the after math.

Here's a few:

• Drained the oil out of my EX500 late one night with the intentions of changing a gasket before putting new oil in. Get up the next morning and since it was the first nice weather we'd had, I decide I'm going to shut the gas off, start the bike and then pull the tank to repaint it. I ran it for about 3 minutes before realizing it was idling without oil in the crankcase.
• While approaching a parking space at work, I shut the key off on my EX500 and coasted toward a spot. I turned the key too far and the fork lock prevented me from turning the way I needed to go to miss the car in the next space (the GM's car) and ended up dropping the bike at about 2mph on its side and broke the end of the clutch lever off. Got up, scoped out the area to see if anyone saw it, stood the bike up and went inside like nothing ever happened.....LOL
• I'm always find myself looking for 7th gear on the EX500 and Daytona or 6th gear on the S50.

Forgetting to put the kickstand down before getting off the bike.

Back in the days of drum brakes, removing the tire to service the brake shoes and forgetting to thread the adjuster nut back onto the brake rod/brake cable resulting in no brakes.

When riding a dirt bikes and stopping on a side hill and forgetting that you must step to the ground with your uphill foot.

Looping a CZ400 backwards in front of the dealer allowing you to take a test ride.

Discovering in mid-air the lip of your jump is actually the tailings for an open mine shaft, and you knew the mine was there.

Trying to wheelie through a large mud hole and discovering the hard way the bottom was that black, bottomless quick sand that brings your rear wheel to a instant halt.

My buddy that tried to follow me on my 500MX through a grassy field of the black, bottomless quick sand ... after receiving the roost of my rear tire he was covered from head to toes, from front tie to rear, in that black sand and was doing a good imitation of the swamp monster.

Riding WFO into the sunset with dust covered goggles

That's just a short list of the highlights ...

After I had owned my XR650L for two or three months, I was filling it up from the wrong side (i.e., the right side) with the bike in neutral. I managed to push it just a tiny bit in the forward direction while trying to get a good seal on the vapor collector on the gas pump and pushed it off of the sidestand. Of course, it's really hard to stop a bike from falling away from you, so down it went. Fortunately it was far from full and I didn't spill more than about a pint of gasoline. The gas station attendant was very quick to switch the pump off and one of the mechanics was also very quick to come help me get the bike back up and clean up any spilled fuel. I didn't really need help getting it upright, once I moved over to the other side (and moved my foot out of the spilled gasoline).

I always fill from the left side and park it in gear when I get fuel now.

_______________________


About six months later while leading a group ride on the XR, I pulled into a driveway to turn around so that we could run the twisty road in the other direction, went in a little deep and put the front tire into a pile of leaves. Rather than turning, the bike went straight as soon as it touched the leaves and down it went. I sort of stepped off as it went down and stood there wondering how I had managed such a dumb move. But I called the "five second rule" on that one, since I got it back up and running in less than five seconds - so it didn't really happen, right?

I like how you can drop an XR650L and have no evidence that it ever happened. You can't do that with either of my other two bikes.

Yep I do that about once per ride. I need to adjust the shifter position on my VFR and keep "not getting around to it."

Ok let's see.

I wasn't paying attention once and filled by cb750 up with diesel, that was pretty dumb.

When I was 15 in 1998, I used my mint 1975 cb400f with 2500 miles on it to play neighborhood hide and go seek with all my other friends that had motorcycles. After I laid it down in the woods, I finally decided to start using my almost as nice '76 cb400f for that.

The other dumbass thing I did was let people or "friends" ride my bikes. People that said they knew how to ride wrecked my motorcycles at least 7 times. Only 2 ever paid to fix it. But I guess that's just being young and stupid because the last time that happened was when I was 15. I finally quit letting people ride my bikes after that.

Right after getting my 1st real street bike, an EX500, I was getting ready to go to work. I thought I would roll my bike off the sidewalk in front of my townhouse, standing on the left side I eased the front wheel down over the curb and immediately realized the sidestand was down, but it was too late. The bike lurched away from me and I was too startled I guess to leave go of the handlebars!!! I then put all my years of dirt riding experience to use and executed a very graceful landing, lol, somehow only getting slight damage to the bar end. I quickly jumped up to make sure no one was watching and hightailed it out of there.... laughing at myself under my helmet...

Well, there was this one time when I started my bike, put the kickstand up and realized I needed to adjust the volume on my iPod in my tank bag... reached into the tank bag started adjusting the volume and suddenly the weight of being 10 days into a 12 day m/c camping trip caught up and down we went. That was the second time I fixed my left turn signal that trip...

After riding my Ninja 250 the 20 miles to home, I put my foot down on ice and tipped over in my driveway.

I had a group of 3 friends over. After some coaxing I finally let one of them (the stupid one) ride my trials bike in my back yard. He starts it, and gives it about 3/4 throttle. Me and my other friend say "remember to use the clutch!" He reply's with "I know" as he pops it into gear (no clutch) and goes full throttle across the yard into the fence. I no longer give out rides. :laugh Another time, I was working on my truck and got all new spark plugs for it. I put them in and the truck fired right up. It was running good but was hesitating, like it had a misfire (or 4). I forgot to put the caps back on the passenger side of the engine. Supprisingly a ford 400 V8 still makes pretty good power running on only one side. :thwack

Coming to a stop light, and trying to look cool by stopping and balancing for a split second before taking my feet off the pegs..... Damn shoe lace hung up on the gear shift lever.

Newish bike that I wasn't used to the less than generous steering stops. Pulled a U-turn in front of a busy restaurant with lots of outdoor seating - thankfully I didn't drop the bike, but it must have been quite entertaining for the patrons.

Now this one really sucked... Just finished leading a buddy through a spirited 100 mile twisty ride and in the last 1/4 mile, in the beach parking lot going to meet our wives, I stop for pedestrian crosswalk. My buddy was more concerned with the bikini-clad babes and WAMMO! I got a split second indication of what was about happen... the look of fear and scattering of the pedestrians in the crosswalk.

Back in the day I had a 56 Ford truck with a 389 Pontiac motor and a 4 speed automatic trans,the trick was the notches for gears had no markings for what gear it was in. Low was rt next to reverse.
I saw a hottie on the side of the road and decided to impress her with one of my standard smoky burnouts.
I dumped it into low and floored it,it took off in reverse like a scalded cat!

There was a car rt behind me.............. I pinned the brakes and threw my head into the rear window pretty hard.
Didnt hit the car but jeeez, not a great way to impress hotties.

My worst was riding a wheelie across a water crossing on a brand new bike and discovering that it was actually a rather large flooded drainage ditch. I discovered that losing your brand new bike underwater is something your riding buddies will still find hysterical twenty years later.

Oh I know I can contribute to this thread.

My old XRL 650 wouldn't start, it'd crank and crank and crank but not fire. Tore it down, pulled the side covers, checked wiring, pulled the plug, no spark, wtf.... Oh right, the kill switch.

I oiled a moving chain (idling on first gear on centerstand). The chain sucked my glove through the sprocket. I was lucky to puncture only my glove and not my finger!

Never oil a moving chain!