Dumbest stunt

If you dare tell I would love to hear some of your experiences that would qualify as a "dumb stunt" involving your bike. I'll fess up and tell that I have actually gotten off my bike and started walking away without putting the side stand down...............oooops. It might not have been so bad had nobody seen it.........but they did.

Awwww.....come on folks. I know you are sitting there thinking "I can't tell anyone about that". Please share because it is all in good fun.

Anyone?

Mine was very similar, but at a busy bike dealers. Me and the bike gently collapsed sideways into pile of empty cardboard boxes. Could I get out? Could I f***. A while later I was rescued after everyone had stopped laughing.
Thankfully this was before mobile phones and cameras.

I was a first-time rider in 2010 and took my VLX 600 for a ride in the countryside. I filled up at a gas station and was going in to pay when I noticed this lady waiting for the pump: she was a looker ! I thought I'll vacate the pump for her before paying. I started my bike, moved it about 2-3 yards, shut off, got off and walked away. Down it went: two strapping young fellows ran and helped me pick it up.
I kept my head down till my helmet was on again !
Jay

I parked my 05 SWing on a side street that had a gentle slope to the left. Did my errands and came back to the bike. Took it off the centrestand and before you could say hey presto! it fell away from me and crashed into the traffic lane. It was a quiet afternoon. Luckily this strapping young fellow and his girlfriend were coming my way and the guy practically lifted the bike by himself. Luckily no damage except to the plastic chrome on the exhaust.
Jay.

L O L ..........both of these stories are awesome and well worded. Thank you both for your honesty. I was starting to think I was the only one that had ever done such a thing until I saw Dale's post earlier today.

After switching from my heavy Vstrom to my Swing my wife and I (wife on the back) was backing out of this very steep and curvy driveway when, upon turing my wheel to go forward, Down my wife went, because I did not realize the steepness of the driveway....the only one hurt was my pride.

I'm glad she was not hurt..........that being said.............L O L again ! Here is another fearless member with another good example of a "Dumbest stunt". Thanks for sharing.

Before side stand switches, leaving work and going left on the driveway, heard the scrape righted to the upright position and drove across the lawn area to the road and headed down the hiway like it was all in a days ride

L O L ..........nice recovery oldwingguy. Thanks for the laugh and for sharing.

When I first got into bikes at the age of 16 my mate Malcholm and I pooled our cash and bought a Puch Maxi moped! We spent ages doing it up coz it was old and rusty. Most of the work consisted of a really badly done and tacky paint job, a line of day glow paint round the wheel rims done with them spinning slowly (seemed like a good idea till it streaked out over the rear tyre when we revved it too much) recovered seat with tiger fur (thanks mum for the use of your sewing machine) a great big 12 foot fibreglass whip ariel with a union jack flag on and the bit we were most proud of a drilled exhaust to help the engine breathe more freely (it certainly sounded faster). We took it out onto Northampton race course after dark and after riding around the main field several times with our mates cheering us on someone piled up an oil drum and a scaffold plank and dared us to try a jump. I went first ( the only jump) I took a run round the field then headed for the ramp, I was lined up perfectly and hit it at exactly 34 mph I knew it was 34 coz that was its top speed. I remember flying through the air with the orange tassels we put on the handle bar ends flying round my face, I revved the engine before I made the perfect landing rear wheel first about 10 feet away, my mates were cheering, but then it went horribly wrong. The bike split in half through the petrol tank which was also the frame between the handle bars and engine, it dug into the muddy ground and I flew again the bike manifold ignited the petrol and the whole lot went up whilst I slid over the mud and ended up in the white line paint used for marking out the field. The worst bit was having to carry the bike bits home again. We tried to make out that it was planned because we were fed up with the bike and wanted it to bike in a blaze of glory, I don't think our mates were too convinced. It did teach me a few things though and it made me want to try harder with my next bike project a
Lambretta ld150 which I still have 46 years on!

Carolina,
Are you saving all our answers to write a book? You seem to ask a lot of questions not always about repairing your Swing. Either you are collecting our responses for a document or you are having a bad case of cabin fever. Just asking.

Thanks for the great story HORNBLOWER. That was definitely one of those memorable moments. Probably not to humorous to you back then ....thank you for sharing it.

Easyrider there seems to be a temporary lull in the repair questions at the moment and many seem to enjoy telling stories about their Silverwings and other bikes from days gone by. I don't have any plans to write a book at this time and I personally enjoy hearing from members on their experiences....hope you do too.

"Flaming blaze of glory..." Great tale, Hornblower. Thanks for sharing and for bringing back memories of my own misguided-youth.

Tim

"Thanks for sharing." Jeez this is all beginning to sound a bit like a 12 step program. "Hello, I'm Bill, and I've been an a**hole... "

Hornblower that made me hurt just reading about it, BUT similar to what a friend did to his bicycle on an attempt to jump from one wood ramp to another, he talked in higher octaves after that one.

carolina wing rider wrote:

Easyrider there seems to be a temporary lull in the repair questions at the moment and many seem to enjoy telling stories about their Silverwings and other bikes from days gone by. I don't have any plans to write a book at this time and I personally enjoy hearing from members on their experiences....hope you do too.

Thanks for the come back. Hope your riding season starts soon. Ride safe.

Weirdest thing ever... It could have been very serious.
Travelling at around 100 km h(60), my then pregnant wife and I were cranked over somewhat in a wide sweeper. All of a sudden we hit a gouge with hump probably formed by something falling off a truck. The Bike a Suzi T500 lurched a bit, shook and then straightened out. What seemed like an eternity, I felt a thump on the pillion seat as my mrs landed square back on the seat.. another little squiggle and we were away again..my pulse rate doing laps of IOM... Thing is it all happened before I even registered that it had happened..

Whoa......that is scary. If you hadn't been the rider you are that incident might well have ended in a very bad way. Luck and skill were on your side that day. Thank you for sharing.

Here's a couple of instances where I nearly dropped my Kawasaki KLV1000 through carelessness dementia? In the first clip, a friend was trying the bike out for size. We then got chatting while I sat astride it and I thought my sidestand was down.

In the second clip, I was getting down on the ground to inflate the rear tyre, leaned against the bike a little and the super-sensitive (since fixed) main stand went forward.

L O L..................I'm laughing WITH you...not at you. Live video action...awesome. Thank you for sharing this with all of us.

My previous "stunts" have been noted before on this site but I will henceforth reiterate at the risk of using too much of your time...:  (plus, I thought a stunt had to be planned... but I digress)

Being a complete novice and having "just" received my new 'used' '05 Swing back in '08 at the age of 63, I just had to ride it around in my five acre pasture plot to get use to it.  Pulled up in the front yard and stopped (and dumped)... immediately got reminded what my legs and that little spring loaded peggy thing on the side was for.  Guess I must have looked like the little guy riding the tricyle on the old "Laugh-In" program...   Still, I got to practice the 'lifting' procedure I had been reading about earlier...

The next time was some months later when I went zinging (speeding) into our little village down the road.  Tried to negotiate an "S" curve that contained loose sand and gravel on the second half of the turn.  Speed and inexperience wouldn't let me lean left properly in that slick stuff so I relied on my human ingenuity, straightened the front wheel and chose to go straight ahead down over the road bank into a convenient brome grass field where I could just continue on my way and come back up on the road...

Much to my surprise there was six inches of water in the bottom of that grass.  Well, down I go again.  A couple of cars stopped to help and a fellow helped me get upright and we walked it back up to the road after restarting it (luckily).  I had been wearing my ATGATT outfit at the time so when I got back to the house (where, of course, our kids from Missouri had just arrived) there was much hilarity and talk of how much I looked like an infamous "swamp creature" what with being soaking wet and grass sticking out everywhere... Well, there's more but time is short so we'll leave it there...

L O L ......several times. Awesome story and multiple laughs. I can read this kind of stuff for hours and it is in no way taking too much of my time. Thank you very much.........send more any time DickO.

carolina wing rider wrote:

L O L ......several times. Awesome story and multiple laughs. I can read this kind of stuff for hours and it is in no way taking too much of my time. Thank you very much.........send more any time DickO.

Carolina,
What about you? Don't you have any stories?

Enjoyed those 'interesting' events with bikes greatly. Now I don't feel so bad about dropping a Goldwing 1800 by just plain forgetting to put down the side stand.

Stalled my GPZ500 (Ninja 500) while turning right out of a T junction. Because it lurched forwards as I dumped the clutch, I made it half-way and was starting to lean into the turn when it stalled and stopped dead. Maybe I was in 2nd or 3rd still?

Any way, I caught it (just) with the bars almost touching the floor. All the cars screeched to a halt and stared as inch by inch I managed to hop it upright with my one leg on that side.

Another time I wasn't so lucky - I'd left the disc lock on at the top of the disc. Made it a good few feet before it found the caliper, and I found the floor. And lost a mirror.

Once pushed a bike off the side stand away from me while washing it. Luckily next doors fence broke its fall. And the fence.

My most strenuous effort at preventing a drop was on a 1982 Honda Goldwing. I was waiting at an intersection for the traffic light to change when a just of wind caught me by surprise and pushed my bike over to the right. I had been leaning left with my left foot on the ground but this gust just pushed the bike over to the right. I just barely got my right foot out to stop the drop but was right at the point of not quite having enough strength to get it completely upright but not allowing it to fall. There was a good minute or so when I felt I was in a battle with the planet's gravity. Bit by bit I managed to "walk" my right shoe toward the bike and got it upright. There was a car behind me who missed the light being trapped behind me with its driver honking his horn. Once I got the bike back under control I turned back to look at the person who was so impatient when he gave me a big smile and a double thumbs up. Apparently my uncertain effort at avoiding a dropped bike impressed him. As a matter of fact it was a couple days before I could walk normally again.

When I first started riding on the island of Kauai, I attacked this downward curve too fast. Not seeing that a funeral was happening at the bottom of the hill and cars were trying to enter and exist the church. I knew that I was going too fast and proceeded to brake and travelled on the center line between cars going in my direction and cars in the opposite direction. Someone above looking down at me saved my bacon.

Another time I was riding in the rain and a wide trailer with a house was approaching me. I was forced to the shoulder of the road. After passing the trailer I tried to return to the black top. With my wheel turned to the left, my bike (Yamaha 100) continued straight. I ended up stopping when I struck the guard rail on the bridge. I was fortunate that I didn't go over the right side into the steam.

Another time was when I was returning from Gunnison Colorado. I was passing through Albuquerque New Mexico and one of my foot peg fell off of my Suzuki T500. I made a U-turn and drove slowly on the shoulder of the road. When I gave up looking for the peg, I dropped my bike when the front wheel slid on loose gravel.

Another time I got my Swing buried up to the rear end in sand. My wife and I were not able to get my Swing unstuck. Just about that time a couple of big Hawaiian guys saw what was happening and came over to help. They just about carried my bike to solid ground. That is when I took the picture for my avatar.

Since we are all fessing up, I'll add my story as well.  We all have them.  The first night of "the course" the class was told quite plainly that dropping the bike is not a matter of  "if"  but rather a matter of "when".  This thread being called "dumbest stunt" is not quite correct.  A stunt is something intentional.  All the listed stories are mishaps, although generally dumb ones.

Mine is a story of a mishap due to target fixation, and not enough speed nor experience.  A little story of a springtime ride with my wife as passenger ... one of her first Silverwing passenger experiences.  I took a right hand turn up a lane (which was in poor repair) towards a parking lot.  In efforts to navigate cracks and holes in the lane's pavement, I drifted towards the muddy embankment to the left side of this up-hill lane. This bank was about a foot higher than the lane's elevation. Soon enough we were both gently tossed off the bike as it came to rest on its side against this soft bank. As did we.  My wife walked up the hill to the parking lot as I righted the bike and got her running for the ride up to the lot, in hopes that this dumb mishap hadn't been seen. (The auto shut off is a great feature of the Silverwing.)

No damage other than bruised ego and muddy handle bar.  So going too slowly and too much concentration on the bank to the left brought me down.  Ride and learn !!