When my friend and I were kids, I rode a ten-speed and he had a funky little bike whose pedals moved in tandem with the front tire. I dared him to ride down a steep slope of road on his bike. With no more than mild encouragement, down he went. I cheered him on as I rode down with him on my trusty ten-speed in case he ran into trouble.
The faster he went, the faster those pedals whizzed around. As he neared the foot of the hill, he began to panic because he couldn't hit the handbrakes (there weren't any) and he couldn't apply the pedal brakes because the pedals were spinning too fast. I yelled to him to slow the front tire with his shoes.
So what did he do?
He stuck his feet into the spokes of the tire. You can imagine the chain reaction as his feet halted the movement of the tire, causing the bike to flip and buck the lad off the seat. He did a few air somersaults, landed on his head, and slid along ten feet of asphalt, with the bike flipping to land several feet in front of him.
He walked out of the hospital with road rash and a few stitches behind his ear, and swore off that evil bike... for a few weeks, anyway.
DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2020
Submitted by: Benj Sinclair
|