Okay, UPD aren’t really something to brag about but wondered how others have fared with theirs. I had personal best UPD while Muni a trail in Irvine, CA.
While riding down with my Coker on a mildly steep hill, saw several women looking on. So of course I attempt to impress by beginning to WW, then… CRASH!!
Face-plant, then ripped the bike shorts and shirt. Bruised up pretty bad on the legs and arm. Cuts and scratches on the face for few days.
Will do I this again in same situation? HELL YEAH!
I had a cool crash today
I was riding on a wood platform at a dog park and some guy bet i couldnt hop up on to it and it dirt to wet wood so i pull the uni up under me and when the tire hit the wet wood it went out from under me and i landed back on the dirt on my back.
I’m not sure I would call it awesome, but it was pretty funny since I didn’t get hurt. I was recently climbing a steep, rooted hill and got hung up trying to roll over a root. So, I yanked up on the saddle handle and gave it an extra strong pedal stroke in an attempt to keep forward progress. It happened so quickly, I barely remember what happened next.
Evidently, I wasn’t leaning forward enough and so the wheel went forward and I went backwards and down. My feet “felt” like they were stuck to the pedals (DX Munis) and I ended up in almost a fetal postion with my feet and Uni above my head and only my upper back and shoulders touching the ground. I looked around to see if anybody else was on the trail near me, because it had to look hilarious. Unfortunately, nobody caught it with a camera.
I’ve had some awesome UPD’s in the snow, they often involve long slides on my feet, which is pretty fun.
Lately I have been slammed on my UPD’s, one face plant in sandy dirt which would have been painless except I chose to skip the wrist braces that day, so I sprained my wrist; just being stoopid.
Then the past two weeks I have had fall that would have been painless if it weren’t for dead wood. One UPD I came off clean and when I planted my right foot it grazed a stump and I ended up with a nice bone bruise on my ankle. Then last week I did a low speed UPD and tripped coming off, ended up centerpunching a log with my thigh. It hurt like the worst charleyhorse ever! It left a biog ole know in my thgh, but fortunately it only sidelined me for a couple days.
I am trying to stay in one piece at least until the Douthat MuniGathering at the end of June; fingers crossed
Of course they are! Why do you think we always get someone to video the really hard stuff, when we think a fall will soon follow? My best bail:
Finding a slippery, muddy and steep slope, the only obvious thing to do was to ride down it. It took several minutes and the help of a friend to crawl my way up, and drag the uni up too, as it was too steep and slippy to stand a chance of walking up. With the help of a tree, I mounted and rode away, holding my brake on as hard as it’d go. I could feel the wheel speeding up and up, but couldn’t do anything about it, and fell. Surprisingly, I got up and walked away, uninjured. The slope was much steeper than it looks in the video, by the way
I’m still trying to figure out what is meant by “awesome” uni crash. Most of those only look awesome from a spectator’s point of view. Especially Padst3r’s crotch-to-notch rail disaster (a classic!).
But I guess incidents like that are much, much more awesome by virtue of the fact they were caught on video – so future generations can watch them and go “Oooooaaahh!” with clenched-up faces.
Unihopper’s vid was also a great example of the elusive “unintentional coasting”, which is somehow one of the scariest things that can happen while “balanced” on a unicycle.
For me, once my shoe tied itself to my pedal while I was going about 15 mph on my Coker. Instant faceplant and broken collar bone. Not awesome.
Back when I first had my first large-wheel unicycle I had a good one. We’re talking my 45" hard-tire big wheel in 1982. I was cruising down the sidewalk when I ran over an un-noticed rock, probably no bigger than 1-2 inches in diameter. With pedals in the vertical position of course. When you’re riding a solid tire, something like that is all it takes to bounce your foot off the bottom pedal and down you go. I ate it into the sidewalk, and somehow the unicycle basically ran me over. Then, as is inevitably the case in these situations, there were some pedestrians right there to see it. On an otherwise empty sidewalk. Embarrassing! But kind of lame in this thread.
I guess I can also re-tell the story of my second-worst unicycle-related crash. For this we go back to 1980; my early days of unicycling. I was running down the street pushing my trusty Schwinn Giraffe in front of me. Never mind why. I was running as fast as I could. If you’ve ever done that with any unicycle, I’m sure you are aware of how the pedals start to cause the wheel to bounce around until it doesn’t really roll anymore. Giraffes do that too. So the thing started oscillating wildly, and suddenly flipped sideways somehow and stopped rolling. So I fell kind of on top of it at my flat-out running speed. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I ended up in a heap with the unicycle, with holes in my body made by pavement abrasion, pedals, chain, etc. My palm was scraped up, and then when my fingertips had touched the ground, they bent over and got scraped up on the knuckle sides. I think I had holes in my clothes. And I was several miles from home. Eventually I got back on and rode home…
I’ve done the “unintentional coasting” thing only once, and it was a scary feeling. Luckily, I fell forward when it stopped and landed on my feet. I think the fear comes from thinking about the possibility of falling backwards flat on your back or head.
Like you said, the crashes are much more “awesome” for the spectators, and video footage helps.
i did the ‘unintentional coasting’ thing once.
i was riding up to a kerb wondering if this would be the 'first time ’ I would hop up it. Anyway, I didn’t hop but I took my feet off the pedals and coasted up to the kerb, ( I know…stooopid ) I hit the kerb and fell backwards off the uni, landed flat on my bum and banged my chin on the wheel!
Ha. The unintentional coast. I’ve had a few of those since I started back and on each occasion it’s like time stood still long enough to for me to think… okay, I’m not going to survive this one.
Now I’ve ate my fair share of turf, but the most interesting crash I’ve had turned out well for me, just a regular UPD with both feet on the ground. I was going down steep single track and somehow the uni ended up upside down with me below it staring up at the tire as it got closer and closer to my face. Luckily no contact was made, but I sat there scratching my head for a while. This was on my nimbus muni, still no clue as to how that heavy tank squirreled out from under me with enough force to get that much air.
My best bail:
