evry on post there worst falls i havent had any worst falls but my friend hgit a rock and did a a face plant a broken jaw and 3 broken teeth
Damn that sounds like a bad bail. Any video??
Mike
In Defect there is a part where Kris Holm try’s to ride a rail with bumps on it.
He falls with the side of his head on the bump.
It didn’t huert I guess couss he didn’t said anything then but it looked painful.
My worst one was when running down the street, pushing my Schwinn Giraffe in front of me. This was in 1980 or 81, so a long time ago. The unicycle started oscillating because I was running as fast as I could, then it started bouncing around and before I could slow down it tripped me. I landed on top of it and skidded, scraping various body parts including both palms, both knees, knuckles on one hand where the fingers curled down, odd cuts and bruises from the unicycle, and general pain and embarrassment.
I sat there for probably half an hour thinking about how to get home. I was near my high school, about 4 miles away, on this 20" wheel 6 footer with a high gear ratio. I finally decided the easiest solution would be to ride it home, which I did.
I’ve never broken any bones (knock knock), but my dad just did last month. He got out of the hospital yesterday, after exactly one month in there. On Feb. 23, my dad (the guy who taught me how to ride a bike) and I set off on the Haleakala downhill. This is where you ride bikes from the top of Mt. Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, down to the beach. It’s a 10,000’ drop in about 26 miles, with almost no pedaling.
To ride the top part, you have to do it as a guided tour as it’s in a national park up there. So we were with a group, on bikes set up just for the purpose. Big heavy Worksman bikes with hub brakes. Anyway, this ride is not for everybody. But the tour companies don’t want to discourage potential customers, so they tend to downplay this fact. You are riding a bike much faster than most people are used to, around hairpin turns, with hand-operated hub brakes and VERY distracting scenery. Speeds may reach up to 30 mph but are mostly in the 15-25 range.
My dad is skinny, and very light for his height. Therefore he tends to not keep up with the group because of lack of weight. So I was showing him how to crouch down to be more aerodynamic. We were doing this for a while, but then he went wide on a turn, clipped a signpost as he left the road, and dropped out of sight off the edge. This was still in the Haleakala National Park, near the entrance, at around 8000’ or so.
He ended up about 30’ from where he left the road, where he’d drilled a hole in a bunch of national park bushes. He had a big gash and bump on his head, that was bleeding a lot, and a big, disgusting cut on his left pinkie finger, where he’d bashed the sign post with his hand on the handlebar. Good thing he didn’t hit the sign head-on, it might have caused a lot more damage.
But he was pretty damaged. First we had to get him out of there though. A bunch of park rangers showed up, and fortunately they have a lot of experience with this sort of thing (I guess it happens a lot). They got him onto a backboard and up onto the road. Then a flatbed truck came, to take him about 1/4 mile down the road to where a helicopter was going to land. But by the time we got down there, the clouds had moved in and the helicopter couldn’t land there. So an ambulance arrived to take him down to a lower helipad. From there he went to the hospital (Maui has only one full-service hospital).
He had five broken ribs, and two hairline fractures in his vertebrae (T6 and T12). The ribs were shattered, with little pieces rather than simple breaks. Ow, a virtual hole in the ribcage! Your ribs’ main job is to expand so your lungs can fill with air. Meanwhile, the ribs had caused a little tear in his lung, as well as his liver.
To make a long story short, the next day he had to be put on a ventilator (breathing tube and mechanized breathing) for four days until his body could cope with the injuries. At this point the doctor said he had roughly a 40% chance of not surviving this. Fortunately he did, and slowly regained his senses, ability to swallow, ability to breathe, ability to walk, etc. over the following weeks. His wive and I stayed in Hawaii several extra weeks to be with him and make sure the hospital wasn’t ignoring his needs. Today they’re supposed to be going home!
Sorry, that was a bike crash. But I had to get the story off my “chest.” And mine was a running crash, though it directly involved a unicycle.
John, I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope your dad get’s well soon! Honestly! That was a gruesome crash!
Which also reminds me why I no longer ride bikes. I trust myself on a unicycle more than I do on my own two feet. I used to bmx, and I would injure my shins all of the time. I even dis-located, and put back in my self, a shoulder.
I realise this will not make much of a difference but, I am very sorry to hear that john. I would find it VERY hard without my dad he helps me and pushes me to study and have fun. I hope your dad a speedy recovery.
Does he ride a unicycle.
Mike
John, I wish for your father’s full recovery.
The worst fall I’ve taken was the first time I tried dropping off something higher than 3 or 4 inches, and landed on my seat with my boys directly in the line of fire. I must have laid there for 10-15 mins before that awful feeling in my stomach went away.
my worst bail was when i started to learn gapping…i was doing probly about a 1-2 foot gap from an obstacle that i built about 1 1/2 foot off the ground to one that was just a square id drawn on the concrete with chaulk… it was going fine till i hit the ground…i had no idea the tire was so bouncy as i had just filled it up and it bounced me back up about 6 inches i panicked and my feet came off the pedals and me and the uni went down…minutes later i realized that i was laying on the ground in some serious pain(turns out i hit my head when i fell off) and im pretty sure that were it not for the fact that my teeth were clenched as tight as could be i would swear that i would have to collect my b*lls off the ground. it reaklly hurt.(good thing i dont want kids)
On a lighter note…
Here’s a compilation of 5 of my most entertaining and/or painful falls - http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=185513
Enjoy!
Andrew
the first one looked quite painfull and i still find that last one funny…its just the expression on your face as you look up…
My worse falls wernt really falls, more of getting hit by the pedals, and those wernt even that bad.
I,ve also tried to do a pedal grab on about a 4-foot ledge, but had way to much momentum and toppled over the other side of the wall which was like a 5foot drop, but it was really funny, i just laid there laughing for a while then got up and kept riding lol
My worst fall was last summer, a week before school. I was riding at dusk, in the rain, on an ATV trail. I had just done a downhill section, and had gone back for seconds ('cause it’s THAT fun :D) when I hit a muddy spot, and got tossed off the uni. I tried running out, but there was a root or rock under the mud wher my right foot landed, and I sprained my ankle. Fortunately I was only a few hundred feet from the car, with an easy access road parrallel to the ATV trail, so I managed to hobble back (ok, and ride on adrenaline). When I got home I spent the rest of the evening hopping on one foot.
I didn’t go see the doctor (I was in the US), and it seemed to get better after a few days, but I kept re-injuring it… Hitting stairs wrong trying to negotiate crowds on campus, the normal everyday twisting injuries that makes your ankle hurt for a few minutes made mine hurt for days. I finnally saw the doctor a month after I injured it, and she told me to take some tylenol and it’d be fine by Monday… Of course my foot slipped on a twig on the walk home and reinjured it 
That was October, and I’m now wearing an ankle brace about 90% of the time. I’m going to see the doctor this week to see about getting physio, because I wake up some mornings and it’s already sore. It’s getting in the way of my unispins. 
The moral of the story is that just because it’s not broken or bleeding doesn’t mean that it’s not a pain in the… ankle…
i scraped my knee once
I managed to break my thumb after completely screwing up a jump up a curb, I landed with my thumb in the spokes… luckily I had unicyclistjoe on hand to inform me that if I could still move my thumb then it wasn’t broken, so we kept riding but then a few days later I was still in agony so I got an Xray and the lady there said I had a “very bad break”, they fixed me up with a cast that went all the way up to my elbow!
gosh your so good at writing. hope your dad gets well soon.
i havent really fallen really really bad but i have a funny crash.
well i was at a skate park with my other unicycling friend, and ofcourse a cop kicked up out.-=( so we went riding around all the little ponds and fishing lakes near the park. i saw this awsome trials line. it was a scinni to a rock to another rock. but than i noticed a little pond. 4 feet from the second rock.
i did it anyways… i bet you already know what happens next. i fell in the water sacrificing myself for my unicycle.
it was so humiliating. about 10 people haivng a picnice nearby where watching. and some were laughing…
thats my little crash story
so both my feet slipped off of my muni on a really steep part of this trail, directly before a large banked turn. somehow i managed to do a no footer and accelerate very quicly into the berm. i have never been able to take both feet off of the pedals and coast… and i sure as heck didnt want to, but i launched over this bank, gapped this big hole that was created in the making of the bank, hit my shins on a fallen tree and flipped and tumbled through the woods, rolling over trees and rocks and such… luckily, i had just made the telemark national team, so i invested in a pressure suit so that i could still ride like a psycho and not care about crashing and getting hurt…
My shoelace got stuck in the pedal axle om the maiden voyage after i had the frame painted on my 29er… didn’t hurtmyself that much, a bit shaken though!