Will the wild me please stand up!!!!

GoldenMotor.com

fall_down_stand_up

New Member
Apr 26, 2009
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granbury
WILL THE WILD MEN PLEASE STAND UP!!!!
I as a MB rider deal with some of the most dangerous driving situations I can think of....Driving in traffic,peice of cake,Driving in city's,piece of cake,Driving with the drunks on the road,peice of cake....
This is my situation everyday....I drive in the country at night on a 2 lane road with no street lights,no shoulder and the speed limit is 65mph for a 6 mile stretch at 9 pm almost everynight and im talking about it being pitch black out....This road has traffic like a city street,except they are going faster....With it so dark the on coming lights blind me and I have people almost run me over everyday....Its a wild and exciting ride,but im nervous at the same time....
I also cross a long bridge that has 1ft max on the other side of the white line and the rest of the road has no lines....Bumps and pot holes in the road and the shoulder that should be there is part of the road with chunks missing in it....
I would like to hear your wild adventures and what you have to go through....
John-John
 
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Bikeguy Joe

Godfather of Motorized Bicycles
Jan 8, 2008
11,837
252
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up north now
Yeah, your wild adventures would be a little less suicidal if you used some lights.
Do you want to become the next organic speedbump?
 

marts1

New Member
Sep 18, 2009
391
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Oshawa Ont CA
(125yz)...One rather exciting event was when I rode over another rider as we were racing..I was right behind him when he dropped his bike at a turn. The amazing thing was it didn't slow me down at all. (550 honda)... One other time I was doing 40mph when a car ran a stop sign, there was no time to slow down. I discovered what free flight was that day.
 

Bikeguy Joe

Godfather of Motorized Bicycles
Jan 8, 2008
11,837
252
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up north now
My wildest ride on a bicycle was when I was running down a 1 mile hill, going about 40 mph and a woman came around a corner in my lane. I was launched around 100 feet down and embankment and my bike was totalled.
 

Bikeguy Joe

Godfather of Motorized Bicycles
Jan 8, 2008
11,837
252
63
up north now
It may be ''wild and exciting" now, but wait until you are a hood ornament or in traction, it won't be quite so romantic.
 
Sep 4, 2009
980
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Texas
Well it weren't on a bike but I went down hwy 152 from I-5 going toward San Jose Ca. in a truck fully loaded (80,000 lbs) first time at night...thought my brakes was gonna go out on me...I downshifted in the middle of it and if it didn't go into gear I would not be here now. This is the hwy that killed James Dean. That was the steepest windinest freeway I ever been on and I been 48 states.
 

RecycleBill

New Member
Oct 31, 2009
74
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0
Greensboro, North Carolina
explain how these lights work? i not understand! i cun...fussed!
Each light has a tiny pickup coil built in. Small magnets attach to your spokes and each time a magnet passes the pickup a small electrical charge flashes the light. The faster you go the faster the flash.

They're not a replacement for headlights and tailights but they will be seen by the cagers. Or you can do this: .bf.
 

civlized

New Member
Apr 28, 2009
689
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Alabama
I guess my wildest ride would have to be when I was jumping my brand new mountain bike off the retaining wall. It was about an 8ft wall on the basement end of my house. I had done this many times on a different bike. This new bike had suspension. I was literally jumping over my car parked beside the wall. I came flying down the trail behind my house, over to the wall. I hit the little ramp on top of the wall and as soon as my tires left the ground, I see that my brother has come to see me and parked his truck right where I should be landing! I should've had a video camera on that one. His truck beared the marks of my bike, my face, and my a$$ as long as he owned it.
 

Nashville Kat

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2009
1,501
55
48
Jacksonville, Florida
Wild Man? I'll show you Wild Man!!!!

It was the summer of 1978, and I had been racing road bicycles since '71 when I was in high school. I was then 24, and there seemed so much more. I was a year out of college but still hanging around Bloomington racing bikes like some surfing bum. I had qualified for the National Road Race in Milwaukee near the end of July, and was then finishing up the usual two weeks of jam packed bike racing known then as the Milk Race and Superweek in Wisconsin. This day we were on the Lakefront again in Milwaukee, where the National road race would be in another week.

The fields there were always huge, as big as racing in the states got then, and there were somewhere between 150 to 200 Category one USCF racers in the field that day. We were well into the race and coming down the Snake Hill, where at the bottom we'd be at top speed for the right hand corner where you put it on the biggest gear and pedalled for all you were worth as the field typically stretched out at full bore heading down past the start/finish line.

My friend Eddy Van Guyse had retired from racing and was helping with the announcing, doing a running play by play from a motorcycle in front of the field. We were excited about the news I had for him from Bloomington, about a movie that was coming to be filmed about bike racing and the Little 500, and it was to begin filming in three weeks. Eddy and I were both in the Little 500 Hall of Fame for the same fraternity, Delta Chi, and I had already recommended him to the movie people to play one of the parts of "the Italian Team Cinzano bike team" of villainous bike racers the producers were seeking.

I was also travelling with a girlfriend that day, who had a sister that lived in Milwaukee, who had been paralyzed in a toboggan accident a year or two before, and was permanently in a wheelchair, and she had come to the race with us that day.

At that point in the course, at the bottom of the hill, as Eddy was telling the crowd, we'd usually be at about 55 to 60 through the corner- the absolute fastest part of the course. I was in good form and usually didn't want to be too far back there, because the yo-yo effect was intense further back in the pack coming out of the corner and at high speed along the stretch, and because, well, of ACCIDENTS!

It was to no avail that day. I was maybe 15 to 20 back from the front, and had a great view of everything that happened- and THAT didn't do me any good. I saw the whole thing coming down. At the bottom of the hill, right in the middle of the corner to the right, the second guy in line hit his pedal and went down in front of everybody. There was really only one line through the corner at that speed so when he went down, everybody behind him started dropping too, and I quickly realized it was going to be hard to get past without falling.

When I got to the corner- a mere split second or two later- I had to go wide to miss the pileup- I came upon the traffic island that separated our two lanes from the two lanes going the other way on the other side of the street, and instinctively just jumped right over it. For a second I felt relieved, because I was past the spill, but when I looked ahead of me I saw a great big old green chevy Impala bearing down on me, and that I was probably going to hit it.

I saw that the car was also moving toward me at maybe 20 or 30, and so quickly knew that this was a very bad situation indeed. MY first thought was that maybe I could get past in front, if ONLY THAT DAMN DRIVER SLOWED UP JUST A LTTTTLLLE BITTTTT! I looked at the driver, a woman, and noticed a completely blank look upon her face- she was just passing through that day, totally oblivious to all the chaos insuing just a few feet away. NO, she was not going to brake the slightest bit, i'd probably hit her before she even knew I was coming. I sorta felt hostile towards her, and somehow the thought came on me at how absurd it was leaving a pack of highly charged racers and now maybe being killed by this totally oblivious person in front of me. It was like we were operating in different timeframes or something, and now my very life depended on just a few fractions of a second. So I knew quickly that I was going to hit her car in that life long dreaded "HEAD ON COLLISION" way. I wasn't even in a car- I was on a bicycle!

There was a moment then that I consciously felt even resigned to my own demise. My life literally passed before me as one often hears. i was for a moment in a strange kind of never-never land, of resigned bliss. Suddenly there came another thought- of my girlfriend's paralyzed sister! Death I could handle, but not the thought of beiing crippled- it jolted me back somehow, but what happened in the next moment is somehow gone from my memory.

I somehow got my leg out from the right side of my bike I believe- I hit the huge Impala at a 45 degree angle just to the right of center. My Colnago bike frame ended up with a right angle bend in the seat and down tubes. I'm a photographer and had been studying Photojournalism, and I think my mind went to a photograph in the school yearbook; a photo of a graceful black long jumper. I somehow knew to stay above the car's front end, my only chance was to jump across the car at impact.

The next thing I knew I was flying backwards over her car hood. I instinctively put my hand back to break the "fall" and my hand snapped backwards on the hood as I flew over it. Suddenly I had cleared her car andI think I had another short feeling of relief, until I impacted hard on the front end of a car parked beside her. My head smacked really hard and I bounced off of that and onto the pavement. My first thought was amazement that I was still conscious, because my head had made such a tremendous impact, and I was glad for the extra-heavily padded red Kucharik leather hairnet helmet I was wearing that day- my very frst thought was that it saved my life.

the rest of me didn't do so well though- the two outer fingers on my left hand had been snapped backwards at 90 degree angles and the bone was sticking out of one at the knuckle- I thought I had lost a finger, but they put it back in at the hospital and pulled the top back over it. I also had huge deep severe bruises on my thighs from the impact, that would only get worse over the next few days. My having qualified already for the Nationals was gone- I knew right away that I wouldn't be ready to race in a week.

So while people came rushing up to all the chaos I looked back over to where the wreck was, and there were countless numbers of the American cycling elite moaning and cursing and bloodied on the pavement. Down closest to me was Jim Ochowicz, who I had been down next to on the pavement just a couple of months before at Sommerville N.J., but that's another whole funny story. It was just sorta strange- "We've got to quit meeting like this".

I was luckily to be alive and was lucky I didn't end up paralyzed or something worse than the sorry state I was in. So I got back to Bloomington and was at least functioning by the start of the filming. I was selected for the camera double for the lead character, and less than six weeks after this debacle at 60mph on the lakefront, I was drafting a semi-truck down Highway 37, again at 60 mph on my thin puncture prone sew-up tires, the "star for a day". Eddy got that part as an Italian bike racer, in fact "The Part" he wanted- the bad guy who puts his pump into our hero's spokes.

The next season was the best of my career somehow, as the movie's release and sucess spurred me on. I was washed up though in a few short years, just about the time American cycling got more serious than ever, and a rider had to be training full time.
 
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fall_down_stand_up

New Member
Apr 26, 2009
554
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granbury
So afraid of you, boy. We are the world.
I once flipped a old toyota pickup 14 times coming back from mexico and when I stopped rolling(I was doing 100mph)my first thought was to turn the key and get out of there but the cab was flat....I had a fractured cheak bone,busted up head and tons of cuts.....They ambulance showed up and took me and my friend that was with my to the hospital....We were laying in the beds next to eachother and I looked over at him and said,you want to get out of here?He said ya,and I took the Iv's out and we hit the road.....It was a small A## town called pacos texas.....We got to a greyhound station and were on our way back to ft.worth....He had a puncherd kidney....He ended up in the hospital a couple days later but is ok and still kicking.....(there was jack daniels involved) lol.....
John-John
 

Bikeguy Joe

Godfather of Motorized Bicycles
Jan 8, 2008
11,837
252
63
up north now
I got out of a hospital bed with three bones in my neck and my collar bone fractured, left the hospital and then rode my wrecked motorcycle to my girlfriend's apt.

That was stupid, AND negligent.