So they pop up everywhere else, why not create a little centalized place for 'em?

I'll start off very mundanely: back in h.s., i was going to cross country practice on a no-school day at like 11am, on some fairly unimportant clackamas/milwaukie-ish road (linwood). i move from bike lane into main lane and do a left turn signal. there's no car oncoming for a couple blocks, a white van behind me by two or three blocks so i think i'm fine.

i'm just starting to turn when i see and feel that the white van has made up those three blocks pretty quickly. i jerk back towards the bike lane/curb, the van swerves somewhat around me and i swear goes up on two wheels (though that's a guaranteed exaggeration). i keep going forward past the street i was trying to turn at and dismount, everything looks and feels fine but i'm shaken and excited so i don't trust my senses.

the driver pulls her van up ahead of me. it turns out to be a single mom taking her five-year-old to pee wee football practice, and she was messing with his juicebox or something while she was bearing down on me. she asks if i'm okay and gives me her contact information if i need to get insurance involved, then points to something on her car.

i expect to see blood or one of my fingers or something (i'm still a bit of a nervous wreck) - and i see that my elbow (i assume) has both shattered her passenger mirror and snapped it off her door panel. my elbow is a little black and blue under my jacket, but i was impressed by doing some legitimate damage to her car while my bike got off free and i only was bruised.

score one for the bikes.

i've also fallen over with both clips and clipless pedals far too many times, though never into a vat of hot soup or a spike pit or anything exciting.

Following my insanely fast friend (rides a red conversion of some kind around PDX) through T intersection at a yellow, a car took off early from (ran the red) and I had to swerve around it, causing me to miss the sidewalk ramp and endo over the curb, earning my first broken bone (finger). Yay!

i saw jonah crash into jerome

Wednesday morning I was biking along 12th. I was stopped at Burnside, light turned green, and I went. Then a white Volvo station wagon ran a red light and ran right into me. My bike is broken and I cannot race or ride for awhile due to some ligament damage in my knee. I was super lucky though. I have no head, neck, or back injuries from the crash, and insurance and driver will cover all expenses, including my summer sucking.

My dad and me agree that most people just suck at driving.

Shit, dude. What's the extent of the ligament damage to your knee? Man, knees are fucking crazy...
But, damn, I feel for ya; I'll be rollin slow/not at all this summer, too (mostly due to my impatience and delusions of invincibility, which have since disappeared).

Surgery is a bitch.

Last year at the track during AVC (largest race of the year,) I was warming up. My bike was making some funky sounds and I couldnt peg what it was. I had Dean take a look at it (he really didnt know who I was at the time, I was still an uber n00b) he said to tighten the crank arms and I should be fine. I tightened everything I could but the sound was still there. I put it to the back of my mind and got ready for the upcomming flying 200.

So I'm rolling around the warm up track nervous as HELL (you'll see why if you go to this years...TONS of people...). I finally roll out for my 200. 1st couple laps are ok, but still uneasy about the sould thats getting louder the faster I go. At the bell, I stand up at the start/finish line and put as much power down as I could. Right as I got to the very top of turn 1, I loose all resistance in my cranks. My right foot unclips as it comes up in the stroak. Everything starts slowing down as I fly over the bars, still holding onto the bike. I hit head first, then my left hip, then my left elbow. Dont remember any of the impact. Next thing I know I'm laying on my back with me looking twards the straight. I notice the bike tumbleing down on top of me, so I basically try and swim away from it. Finally get to the botom of the track. All I remember then is someone holding my head and telling me not to move it, so I nod. Did that like 5 times.

So the check me out, patch me up, and ask me if I want to ride again. I told them if my bike was ok, then yes. Dean got the bike in ok shape, so I jumped back on and did it, although the front wheel was WAYYYYY out of true.

It ended up that I had pulled the wheel, and broken the chain (it was a really crappy $5.) Had several people tell me they didnt think I was walking away from it.

Once I got off the bike from my ride, my fiancee and best friend had to carry me to the car because my hip hurt so damn bad. They wanted to take me to the Er, but I refused. I ended up going after about 3 hours of my vision still being pretty hazy.

Somehow I didnt break anything, and only had a small concussion. They couldnt figure out why my vision was messed up.

Oh, and all of this was on 7/7/07, the luckest day ever. I called bullshit

how old are you?

oh, i was just wonderin

Ive only had 2 notable crashes in cycling.

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike a lot with my Dad. We were riding around this little lake maybe a mile and a half from our house. We were at the end of the ride and leaving the lake/park area. It had a tight paved windy path that had been covered in pine needles from the sorrounding trees. I took the corner too hard and went down on a turn and put my right leg down, and put enough force on it that I spiral fractured my femur. Yeah, my thigh bone. The hardest bone to break in your body. 2 or 3 weeks in traction and a couple months in a body cast later im alright. Thinking back, I largely attribute this to why I never got seriously more into cycling during my middle and high school years. Lesson, wear you helmet and drink your milk you punk kids.

A less traumatic but far more recent wreck happened riding my Bridgestone RB-2 with a buddy, and we had done about 15 miles and heading up in NE. We were cruising a a pretty fast pace, probably above 15 but less than 20mph. We come around the corner from Rosa Parks onto Willamette and I reach to the downtube shifter and upshift. Out of the corner of my eye I notice something fall. I realize its my downtube shifter. 'Ahh hell' I figure. Thinking im going to have to pull off and figure out how to fix it now. So I yell out to my buddy to stop, and I reach up for my brake and just start to squeeze the rear. The pad may have just touched the rim when I start going up. I dont know WTF is going on, but I am above my bars. Then I have that 'oh shit' moment where I realize all my possible 'what ifs' are happening. My head hits first, luckily not my face, but soon moves and my shoulder takes the brunt of the hit and I slide on it a little till my legs come around and I am laid out in the bike lane. First thing I do is sit up and start to stand, then I realize I should take it easy. Some nice other bikers stop and my buddy circles back around. Turns out that shifter that came off managed to bounce right into my spokes. Made it through the fork wound around a spoke and reach the end and stopped my wheel with enough force to bend my fork 5-10 degrees back. Effectively sending me over the bars cracking my helmet and screwing up my shoulder for a couple weeks. The fork is still bent on that RB-2, sad too, it was a good bike. Ill fix it up soon though.

I have two many stories.

jerome crashed into me once

a car crashed into me once

another car crashed into me another time

My friend invited me up to black butte a couple years ago, and while we were there, we rented some bikes. being the wee little noob I was, I never checked out the componentry to check if it was all dialed in. we ride for about 30 minutes along this paved path and nothing seems wrong. the bike was full suspension so I stood up on the pedals and started bobbing up and down on the bike, checking out the travel. next thing I know, I'm diving into the pavement, me left shoulder following my head in quick succession. It turns out the quick release on the front wheel was incredibly loose, so much so that when I was bouncing along, the front wheel actually popped out. Broke my collarbone on the left side. Still use that helmet.

When I was younger, my dad and I used to go on rides a lot. He and I used to ride this track out near Seattle for fun when I was way younger. I was doing some actual conditioning on this track at one point when I had just joined a "young adults" track racing course(class? I don't know) with him, and there was a girl a few years older than me on the track as well. She started coming up on me pretty quick and promptly started half-wheeling me. Long story short, she clipped me, and I slid all the way down the track to the apron. I was lucky enough to be wearing a helmet, but I had some pretty nasty bruising and a couple larger patches of nasty road rash, a sprained wrist, nothing too horrible. My bike was relatively fine, though. Just some scratches and my rear wheel out of true. That was probably my worst crash. Although, it might just be that I was only 11 when it happened and it was much bigger deal to me then than it would be now.

people lying in teh interwebz? GASP!

We need to find a Laundrodrome in Portland. That shit sounds sweet.

Me too!

One gear under god?! That's the best thing I've ever fucking heard.

Teen Idol:

Yeah, it's a pretty strange place. It's like a seaside beach town, that's about three blocks long, and then a road to a ferry. Golf carts on the streets. It's bizarre. We ride down on the Newport side, and the cross over on a ferry to a liquor store. We usually just act super bad on the little boardwalk, and then ride off the island after to some trails. It's the weirdest little area. Although, when we were riding off the island one night, an older gentlemen yelled at us "one gear under god!" That was pretty killer.

my mom has a beach house right by the newport bay.

Yes. Hilarious.

yung jeezy pdx:

Teen Idol:

Yeah, it's a pretty strange place. It's like a seaside beach town, that's about three blocks long, and then a road to a ferry. Golf carts on the streets. It's bizarre. We ride down on the Newport side, and the cross over on a ferry to a liquor store. We usually just act super bad on the little boardwalk, and then ride off the island after to some trails. It's the weirdest little area. Although, when we were riding off the island one night, an older gentlemen yelled at us "one gear under god!" That was pretty killer.

my mom has a beach house right by the newport bay.

She must be loaded. Congratulations.
If you need someone to swim with in your money bin a la Scrooge McDuck, I'm your man.

I'm still waiting for a good time to drop a Launchpad McQuack reference. I'd settle for Gizmoduck though.

Your Mom is a dime and she's lucky 'cause I was in her wallet. OHHHH!!!!!

Hey, wher'd yer post go? That shit was funny.

Okay, it's back, haha.

teen idol, can i borrow a bike when im down there? ill put this in the whisper thread too.