Share your "First Wipeout" Story.

There's nothing I love more than sticking it to the man by reading bike stories while getting paid. So share yours! Maybe a humble N00b such as myself can even learn a thing or too and avoid bailing (at least for a little while.)

I cant even remember my first "Crash" but my first big one, would be on my XL500. I was keeping up with my 2 uncles and dad (XRR, XRL, XR600) and I came over a jump a little nose heavy at about 50. Front wheel went directly into a pot hole and over the bars I went. Bike flew over my head and flipped twice. Knocked the air out of me and bruised me up. But I was ok thanks to AGATT!!!

I still remember the day when I got my first bike, an XR80 for my 8th birthday. The entire family was taking it in turns to ride around the yard until mum got on and popped the clutch a little too fast doing a wheelie straight into her beloved rose bushes. Still laugh about it to this day.

haha my mom did a wheelie on my CR80 into my cousins neighbors flower garden tractor tire thing. she shot straight up and landed both feet off bike straight up and down full throttle.

muy first crash was on the same bike riding on wet grass slid out and broke my knee and collar bone and spent the summer in a wheel chair

Not a crash, but my first injury, related to my first motorcycle, occurred before we even got it home from the dealer. my Dad bought me a '78 Honda Mini Trail 50 shortly after my 9th birthday. We were bringing it home in the back of the station wagon, up on the kick stand, and I believe not tied down, when my dad shopped short, almost missing a turn. I was sitting in the back of the wagon with the bike, which promptly fell over. On my right hand. Little finger between the chain and the sprocket as the rear wheel spins and I have a truncated pinky finger on my righ hand.

Mom was pissed.

A few years before my first dirt bike, I was wheelying my banana-seated powder blue bicycle when I noticed the front wheel had come off.
Without thinking, I set the front end back down as I usually would. It seemed obvious after the fact what would happen - forks stuck, I kept going over the bars - but at the moment it sure was a surprise.
I took maintenance a bit more seriously after that.

More stories, please.
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This will really date me. My first ugly crash was on a borrowed Kawasaki F5 Pighorn jumping dunes on the beach. I got out of control off the last one and landed face first on the engine out on the hard pack beach sand. It destroyed the K-Mart full face helmet I was wearing. But the mighty Pighorn was more or less unscathed.

Fast forward 30 years and my LC4 would have ripped through there at three times the speed and soaked it all up like subdivision speed bumps. But I would also be serving a life sentence for riding a motorcycle in the dunes at the beach and destroying the "fragile ecosystem" on what was then a manmade sandbar. Now the place is a resort.

The scary thing is, this was so long ago that we actually called crashes "wipe outs". Redneck surfer hippies rarely seen outside of the SC and GA Sea Islands.

Two days after my 16th birthday and getting on the road (legally), I rode to a party in a small village a few miles away from home. It was a damned cold night and I hadn't even given a thought to the road conditions - Headed home at about 1:00am, I had only gone 1/2 mile when, making a sharp left at a cross-road, I was left standing on one leg, as the bike slid out from under me and skated across a broad patch of black ice on its side. I didn't drop it again that night but was reduced to riding at walking speed in the ditch or on the grass verge for much of the way. When I finally made it home an hour or so later, I was frozen to the seat and with a frost-bitten thumb.


BTW... I'm sure this belongs in Face Plant

Damn that's funny!
In fact I'm surprised it never happened to me!

Never crashed on my first two bikes: KZ750 and 650 Nighthawk. Got a PERFECT used 91 K75S-ABS in CA in 96 so I could ride it up Highway 1. Did that. Great ride. Didn't ride it much because I was working out of town. In May I rode it 4 hours to a bachelor party. Got up the next morning with a MASSIVE hangover. Was leaving for a vacation in Thailand in a couple of days and needed to get ready for the trip so instead of being intelligent I started my 4 hour ride home. After about 2 hours I fell asleep at 60mph on a two lane road. Fortunately I had drifted right, not left into oncoming traffic - lots of it. Hitting the gravel woke me up. I was still riding and I tried to gradually coax it back to the pavement and was getting there until I hit a rock or rut or something that took me down in a lowside on my right side. Fortunately I'd scrubbed off quite a bit of speed before the splat.

I was dumb at the time and was wearing streetGATT. Street leather jacket, Levis, hiking boots with Olympia MC gloves and an Arai Quantum. Very minor scrapes on hip, a couple of scratches on the leather jacket. Not a mark on the helmet. My only real injury is that my knee somehow got bent the wrong way and pushed down the tibial plateau a few mm. Fortunately not enough to require nasty bone-rebuilding surgery. Six weeks on crutches. I still went to Thailand by myself as planned though. People would ask how my leg got hurt and when I told them motorcycle they all thought it happened there since they rent squid bikes to stupid people in Phuket.

Right side of bike trashed. Motor hit a big rock or something and broke open the timing case. Being a BMW, my beautiful, new-to-me, perfect bike was totaled.

I was very lucky. Darwin lost.

Lessons learned:

Don't ride hung over.

If I feel sleepy AT ALL when riding, I stop ASAP and take a break.

I guess you could call this a wipeout

http://www.motohouston.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111896

make sure to go to post 16 for the rest of the photos

lesson learned, grease and soot builds up on parking garage roofs in downtown areas (from resturant vents and stuff) and that stuff builds up if the roof is seldom driven on.

It's worth the click and safe for work

all the soot that stuck on my rubber

Not my first, I'm sure, but probably the most embarrasing. I was heading a few houses over to my friends to go up in the trails on my 69 DT 175, and thought it would be a good idea to pull a wheelie for a girl I liked, walking up the sidewalk. Well, when I yanked on the bars, the left grip came off, immediately planting left bar in the road. Got the right bar end in the gut.

I was down for a little while, catching my breath. Good times!

First wreck was when I was 14-years old and messing around on my 1978 Yamaha GT80. I hadn't been on the bike for a few weeks due to a family vacation, but went balls-to-the-wall right away, down the local trail. There were some big drainage ditches the cross the trail from the nearby major road, which form these great "dips" about 3 feet deep and maybe 6 feet wide. I had become so familiar that I used to be able to jump the bike to the bottom and launch off the far side, getting quite a bit of air.

But being off the bike for so long, I came in too hot, overshot and jumped smack into the far side of the ditch. Forks compressed, chest hit the handlebars, and I was pogo-stick launched, cartwheeling down the trail a bit. Really had my bell rung, and sat there trying to catch my breath for about 10-minutes. I was lucky... only wearing jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes, with a full-faced helmet and gloves (maybe).

As I sat there, stunned, a local cop drove by on the nearby road and I saw his head swivel to watch me. With nothing broken, I climbed back on the bike (bent and tweaked sideways handlebars ) and rode home, slowly. Thing was... to ride home I had to ride on our neighborhood streets for a mile or so. 14-year old on a 2-stroke dirt bike = not legal.

Well, as I pull into the driveway (with my folks sitting on the front porch) the same cop pulls into the driveway behind me and gets out, asking if I had ridden my bike on the street. I told him no, but he knew there was no way I could have pushed the bike home that quickly. But he knew I had wrecked considering he drove by right after it happend, plus the state of the bike (and myself). He told me a story or two about him riding as a kid, and said for me to be careful and not to ride on city streets, then left.

Probably why my parents never let me upgrade to a bigger bike when I asked later on.

Mine was on the test ride of a 74 Yamaha 500. I had never ridden a full sized motorcycle but went to buy the 500. The salesman told me how to shift it and off I went. I went about a mile, pulled off on an approach and locked up the front brake. It went down. I had a cast on my left arm from surgery about a month before and I was not sure I could lift the bike back up. I was able to and hoped the guy didn't see what happened. I was stupid enough to buy it then. I've been ridding since.

You guys make my day!

Alright so here's mine...

My dad brought me home an old Yamaha IT 175 out of the blue one day.
(Boy, I bet he regrets it now! ) After riding around our property a little and showing some skills at tooling around in circles, we took it down to the local boat launch by the river to learn a little more. First lesson: Riding up and down small hills. He was teaching me to balance my weight and throttle on hills. So, I rode up the small side of the gravel ramp down to the launch and proceeded to sit down at the top and grab a massive handful of throttle. Being a brand new rider, I of course did bug eyes and held on. Bad idea. My dad says I looked like superman clinging to the bike as it shot up the ramp, finally dropped it down. Of course I had no gear but a helmet. That being the awesome bike that it was, I got off with a big chunk of my shin taken out by the footpeg and an incredibly bruised ego, but no damage to the bike. Injuries aside, I did sheepishly get back on and ride a few laps.

God I love motorcycles.

Probably not my first fall but definately the most memorable.

Started riding in '73 when I was 7 while living in a residential subdivision. Neighboor kid had a Honda QA-50 and we rode it in his back yard. The next year I got a Honda MR 50 Elsinor 2-stroke and rode that thing so much it and wore a track of ruts in our front yard. Within 6 months my parents bought a house and some property in the "country" complete with in an in-ground swimming pool.

One day my sisters (one a year older and the other a year younger than me) had a few girlfriends over I was showing off and pulled that little bike to the edge of the swimming pool and reved the thing a few times to get their attention. To this day I don't know how or why it happened but I released the clutch while reving and the bike and I lunged right into the deep end of the pool - about 8 feet of water.

After climbing out of the pool I ran into the house to tell mom what happened and then had to strip to my skivies in front of my sisters girlfriends and swim down with a rope and looped it around the handlebars so mom and I could pull it out of the pool.

Embarrased, hell yes.

Did I learn a lesson about "showing off" for girls, no not really.

About 1984, hoped on a friends POS dirt bike that his dad brought home that week. My friend asked...do you know how to ride it, and I promptly replied, Yes.

30 feet later, off the road, into the ditch, onto it's side.

Things have improved from there.

About 1997, I made a mistake when teaching my son how to ride a 50cc in a friends yard. Saw him heading for a small tree and told him "watch out for the tree..."...........................he hit the tree. Of course. Should have said "stay on the trail".

happened a few weeks back on my honeymoon in spain.

riding a gilera dna 50cc, in in a roundabout and a car didn't yield to me, tapped the rear brake a little to much and down i went. car kept going, bike was fine so i got back on and rode off. got home to find a strawberry on my knee and elbow. wife laughed at me, then nurced me back to health.

First Wipe-out?
The year was 1982
The place was located in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia.
I had just returned home from the local Suzuki/Kawasaki dealer with my very first motorcycle. A brand-spanking, new 1982 Kawasaki KX-80, in all its lime-green hotness.
I'd been wanting one of these for a year and, with my parents paying out the spring bonuses to their employees at our mining machinery repair shop (the employees were my step brothers) in the form of (2) 1982 RM250Z, (2) RM465Z, (1) CR480, they felt it was time to get me and my little brother bikes. He got a Jr50
I unloaded it and then went about the process of farkling it out with not just Fox, JT, and Oneal decals, I also installed a dead-man switch that killed the bike's ignition if I became separated from the bike.
Then I closely examined it all over, and tightened a bolt here and a bolt there. I'd heard that sometimes new bikes come with bolts that are not torqued down properly and I didn't want to have something bad happen to my brand new beautiful bike on her maiden voyage.
I filled it up with 32:1 pre-mix, as recommended by the shop, and started it up on the second kick.
I decided that the best break-in method involved riding it like I stole it and was running from the cops, but my step brothers told me I need to vary the speed a little at first, so I put on my helmet, brand-new JT Boots, lime green racing jersey, and took off on my first ride. A trip to Hank's Shack. (The old drunk guy who lived at the head of the holler, or "hollow", as most non-rednecks would say it)
In those days there were far fewer problems riding dirt bikes on state roads, especially in the very rural part of WV where I lived. We could, on most days, simply ride up the "paved road", at a moderate speed, so as not to make a loud ruckus, and people let us be because people were okay with kids on bikes since they kept us out of more serious trouble.
So, I ride as quietly as I can up the paved road, past the 7&8 church & Mose's store, through the "straight-stretch", then on past the old 5&6 tipple, past the "Colored Church" (It was West Virginia 30yrs ago; that's how it was referred to. Not saying it was proper...)
So I get to the end of the paved road and I let her rip a few times past the slate dumps, where the hill climbs were, and then I tried a few out. after climbing all the hills easily, I decided I'd take the old airport route (the runway of an old, abandoned municple dirt strip airport from the 30's) instead of the dirt road that ran beside it, next to the creek, because the normal road washed out a lot. Then it would be onto Hank's because I wanna see his pig that drinks beer out of a can! (Hank named it after the pig on Green Acres, but I can't remember that pig's name. He'd throw it a Pabst and it would bite a hole in the can and chug it, then fall over)
So, I head up past the "dairy straight", (long straight stretch of light gravel and hardpack dirt) to the "S-Curves" as we called them, a 95° right turn feeding directly into a 105° left turn. I power slid through those curves like a frikkin' PRO and I never let up from there.
I shot up past Copley's bridge, past the Kelly Tire store, flew down the airport runway, round the corner back onto the main road, and made it as far as old Copperhead Bridge, which had been torn out for like 15 years.
(It got it's name because when it was torn out, there was a den of over 100 Copperheads in the base of it)
As a result of not having a bridge there anymore the road passed through the creek bed beside the old foundation.
One of the things people did in those days would be to park near the creek and block that section of the creek with some old rail road ties and rocks nearby, and use the resulting 3ft deep pool of water as a wading pool for the little kids while the bigger kids and adults swam in the much larger and deeper swimming hole 50 yards up the creek.
I was WFO and it suddenly became evident, someone forgot to remove the makeshift dam that day. It was also suddenly evident that I'd forgotten to check the wing-nut on the rear drum brake actuating bar.
When I saw how deep and wide the creek had become, I went to hit the rear brake, and there wasn't any rear braking to be found! The bike hit the water at nearly top speed and stopped in what seemed to be about .5 seconds.
It took me considerably longer to stop. I skittered across the top of the water ala rag doll for about 25 ft and up onto the sandy bank on the far side.
Thankfully, the bike came to rest leaning up against the railroad ties without actually ever falling over or hitting anything, and I faired only marginally worse, with a better understanding of what it is like to be the part being sand blasted...
I rode home and told no one, but told the dealer the bolt must've backed off on the way home and they gave me a new one, which I installed back on the bikealong with a lock nut to prevent a reocurrance.

My first and only crash was 2 years ago during winter. I still rode my honda cbf 600 back then. Got up early to go to the clinic where I go to School. Heard story's on the radio about frozen pavement and traffic jams due to slippery roads. I got outside and figured it wasn't that bad, no icing or nothing, so I took my trusted road warrior out of the garage and headed for school.
2 turns later I was sliding over the pavement figuring it might not have been such a good idea to take my motorcycle after all.
I was not ATGATT, but thanks to the nice ice coating, none was needed