What's your funniest or scariest (without consequence) incident when riding alone

[Uni]

Cool, a leopard" and I stopped.

 

I would've have probably done the same. Awesome story to have to tell.

[Uni]

Slightly off the title (because there was a consequence, but still amusing to look back on)

 

Back in April 2011 I bought a shiny new hard tail mountain bike. 

Made the purchase on the Saturday, but just before the store closed, so they asked if I would mind collecting on Sunday. Of course nobody wants to wait, but I agreed.

Sunday comes, I collect the new toy, and it is pouring with rain, so I don't get to  ride it.

Monday and Tuesday I have no chance to ride, but now I am itching.

Wednesday I decide, "to hell with this, I'm leaving the office early to go ride".

I get home nice and early, pull on all my kit and hop on the bike.

I'm just having a relaxing ride getting acquainted with the bike, and am riding next to the road. I go over a mound of dirt, no exaggeration, maybe 10cm high, but it drops a little on the other side and is right next to the paving of the exit to the Engen garage, so, I peg the front wheel and go over the bars, and come down on my elbow. I'm on my back, bike on top of me, trying to get uncleated, and I realise that all the petrol attendants are staring at me, so, I am up in record time,cut up and bleeding, but because the adrenaline is flowing, the only thing I notice at this point is my bruised ego and I ride home in record time.

 

Turns out I broke my elbow in 3 places, and it took them 6 days to work that out, but that is a whole other story...

I think we need to start a hub fund for you and a few others for protective gear ;p

[BarHugger]

About 3 or 4 years ago...and I posted the story on the hub...I was riding through the forest and saw a motorbike parked on the side of the forest road...it was almost dark but still visible....so I focused on the bike and tried to work out who it belonged to, until I saw movement to the right ahead...as I neared..I noticed the movement was very pink in color and very quickly realised that before my eyes were 2 people...she was propping up the tree with both hands and he was inspecting the tree from behind her...although I couldn't for the life of me understand why they were both buck naked! Anyway. When I shouted the requisite "hey! What you doing" she stopped propping up the tree..looked up and I was treated to two boobs a bobbing. They made a feeble effort to cover up..but being naked made that quite difficult. Luckily for them I was gone in a flesh...I mean flash

Lucky busttard......you saw the endangered and very scares post-marriage funky monkey........

[DirtyFrank]

I clipped a friggin baboon at Tokai....big mutherf.cker too, needless to say I gathered myself up and broke the record outa there. First time there. What an experience.

[Lurch the stalker]

I think we need to start a hub fund for you and a few others for protective gear ;p

I take cash donations too

[Flashfozzy]

A stupid OTB down the river at Northerns a year ago ended in a broken neck. C7, T1, T2 and both of the top ribs in my back. My only companion was my 11yr old daughter.

Fear and adrenaline should be bottled as it made me get up and ride out to get help

[Rocket-Boy]

Many years ago I took my bike with me when I was in Umthatha for work, there is an awesome reserve about 30ks outside of it so I went for a ride at about 4pm. Being winter it got dark quite early and there are pine plantations on either side of the car park that I needed to ride through.

It was just dusk outside of the trees but inside it was full on night!

So Im riding through and Im very much by myself when I hear this thundering sounds coming from my left hand side, whatever it was it was big and there was a lot of it. I panicked, made girly sounds and tried to aim for the light...

Ended up clipping a tree and going down then jumping up and running out the other side.

Next thing a heard of wild horses pops out about 20m from me and carries on charging along!

Had no idea there were that many of them up there. It took me about 10 mins to find my bike after that :/

[RocknRolla]

There was this one time, in a galaxy far far away.....

 

My first bike after I got married was a terribly cheap and extremely nasty makro didnt want to sell this brand special that i bought from westdene cycles. Even had a rack fitted for the baby seat that i took my eldest on occasionally.

 

Went for an early morning, before work jaunt in the quarry that is eagle canyon now. The infrastructure was being installed and while bombing down the nice smooth dirt road into the ex quarry, all of a sardine, there is a ditch that was not there 2 days ago.

 

Now I was faced with two choices, hit the crappy v-brakes and hope for the disastrous best, or try and use the dirt mound and clear the ditch. Being very experienced in the world of cheap bikes, I opted for the latter.

 

I clreared the jump beautifully, landed with my backside on the seat, which in turn bent the cheap chromed steel and luckily the rack for the kiddy chair saved my tender regions and I could ride out my precarious landing like a brain surgeon on a chopper.

[Bonus]

The legavaan (aka monitor lizard) i nearly rode over at Northern Farm down near the single track along the river near the airport? 

 

No one believed me..

 

..

Had one cross the path in front of me and slide down into the dam, just before the weir, a while ago. He must have been 1.5m long :-)

[Stretch]

Lucky busttard......you saw the endangered and very scares post-marriage funky monkey........

 

when I saw them i immediately thought...well they're hiding this from someone!

[J∆kk∆ls]

Cycling to work I wanted to pop onto the curb when I realized it was a lazy effort. That and I thought the shock was locked but it was not! As the fork eased in and stopped the wheel from rolling over I slowly and very elegantly scorpioned in front my local coffee shop.

 

I could feel their eyes on me I did not get coffee that day!

[EmptyB]

Had one cross the path in front of me and slide down into the dam, just before the weir, a while ago. He must have been 1.5m long :-)

Ditto....I nearly had a classic OTB along the river single track because of one of these big buggers

[Spoke101]

One early dark as in 5am morning ride in the forest came flying round a corner and straight in to two huge wild pigs who got just as big a fright. Did a flat out sprint till I was well clear. Had a look at my HR when I got home it went from 130bpm to 170bpm in a second.

[Shaun C]

I decided to go for a late afternoon ride while staying at Zebula for a weekend. I was alone and got horribly lost, with the sun setting quicker than I had anticipated. I could barely see where I was going, only able to make out the general direction of the road and dark shapes of the trees, while struggling to stay upright whenever I landed up riding through very soft sand. Suddenly the trees on my right started moving... well more like running... and at the same time I climbed on the anchors I realised I had just ridden into a group of Giraffe. I hit the deck before I knew it and I could hear they were now at full tilt, I just wasn't sure in which direction. Instinctively I curled up into the foetal position where I had fallen and closed my eyes hoping they wouldn't run over me. When it got quiet again I opened my eyes, got up pretty shakily and carried on trying to find my way home again.

[Shaun C]

The same weekend at Zebula I went for another ride, this time making sure I rode mid-morning in broad daylight when hopefully the animals were taking their mid-morning naps and not moving around too much. I came around another corner into a herd of Zebra, with some of them lying in the road, blocking my path, with the closest guy standing up and turning to face me. I stopped as quickly as I could and we just stared at each other for about 30 seconds. Still fresh in my memory from a discussion a few weeks before with a game ranger, was his stories of how vicious Zebras can be when fighting as well as his experiences when trying to capture and move them - a bite can take serious chunks of flesh off you. It was clear that my eyeballing them wasn't going to move them out my way, so I u-turned and took a different route. Haven't been back to Zebula with my bike, but will be happiest when riding in a group and bringing up the rear after my experiences!

[Cat2forLife]

Ok this doesn't REALLY count as riding alone, but I recently built myself an MTB. After years of riding on the road, I figure, how hard can this be?

 

I was lucky enough to get an entry for the MTB Argus from a friend (and for free!), so again, how hard could it be?

 

So the first 10km or so had A LOT of loose sand.. Being used to riding in bunches, I figured well I'd do my turn early and then suck wheel to the end. I head to the front of the group and realize no one can hang on my wheel. Obviously I am amazing at this. Come to the first corner with loose sand and my front wheel does a 90 degree turn.. Got a face full of sand and scuffed up my fancy new shoes.

 

As if I hadn't learned my lesson, later in the race, I'd started to get the hang of this mountain bike thing. One of the descends was quite fast (by my standards, anyway). Now, being a badass mountainbiker, I casually look back to see where all the noobs I left behind are. I slightly veer to the left, where low and behold, there is a HUGE hole. I literally closed my eyes and just hoped for the best. I somehow managed to jump/fall over the hole without crashing.

 

Was an interesting race!