Ducati Monster Forum

What's the stupidest lapse in judgement you've done with regards to your bike?

Me: I pay attention to every little detail when -on- the bike, drive defensively, safely etc. 

After pulling in to my garage following a nice ride, I brainfart and forget to put the kickstand down before I get off the bike.

I'm basically all the way off when it starts tilting, takes me about 2 seconds to see what's happening, then "oh sh!t" as I lunge to grab the handlebar to save it.

Too late, I end up 'guiding' it as it goes down for minimal damage (scratch on the left end of the handlebar and small scratch on mirror), but the handlebar pins my left hand to the ground.  360 pounds concentrated entirely onto my pinky finger.    I managed to lift the bike with one hand a few inches to remove my trapped/ smashed finger, then proceeded to curse as loud as possible as I'm seeing stars for the next few minutes. 

One of most painful things in my entire life. My pinky is now as purple as Prince and twice his size. 

It's like that scene from "Kill Bill" where Kiddo can't use the chopsticks because her hands are all mangled, except without the chopsticks :)

Lesson learned.


Anyone else have any stupid mistakes we can amuse ourselves with?

I was teaching my friend some of the motorcycle safety course skills and we were practicing the slalom. Since I don't own road cones we 'procured' a few from a local construction site. Instead of the low cones they were the three foot variety.

All was going well until I got a little close to one and it snared under my peg and hooked over my right foot. I stopped but my foot was pinned to the peg. World's slowest fall to the right side. Bent the rear brake lever and cracked off a bar end mirror.

My pride on the other hand was completely destroyed.

Excited to take the first ride of the season, I gave it a little too much gas on a right hand turn out of a parking lot. Conspiring against me were cold tires, cold pavement and coldest of all - gravity. I was able to save it and right the ship, but I got it tipped pretty far over for a second. I've only been riding 5 years, so there's lots of time to screw up worse.

Im generally pretty awesome and dont make silly mistakes like that.   [thumbsup]

cept for this one time I was backing a dirtbike off of an open trailer. It was RIGHT against the rail as there were also two quads jammed on. I was walking it back with my left foot on the trailers fender. Well, the wheel dont go forever and eventually I ran out of fender and....yup. Toppled right out of the back. Luckily, I rolled away before it crushed me!

bike was all good and I enjoyed the day!

During my first "all day ride", I came to a stop sign where a side road intersects a main road. The side road takes a slight bend to the right at the stop line, and chambers downhill, while the main road is coming down a sweeping left hander.

Came to a full stop, and put my right (downhill) foot down, only to notice I had to keep going to find pavement, and then shortly thereafter I'm stepping off my bike as I drop it in slow motion.  [bang]

Thankfully the frame slider took the brunt of the damage, and just a little bit of rash on the stock exhaust were all I had to show for my inattention. (Hey, I'm going to just upgrade exhausts at some point, right?)

So now I try to never stop on chambered hills, and when I do, my uphill foot goes down first.

Most recent dumb thing: Popped the clutch to fast going up a hill last weekend from a stop and ended up doing a sidewise burn out up the little hill and into the oncoming lane a bit. Thankfully no traffic. Needless to say I've been practicing slipping the clutch more on hills ever since.

Dumbest ever: dropping the bike in a Parkin lot, no reason. I was just tried and forgot the kickstand. Ever since I always run though a check list routine getting on/off the bike, keeps me safer because as long as I dont forget the checklist I won't do something like that again.

Oh, also one other time.....but seriously, I hardly EVER do anything other than perfection......  ;D

I was putting my triumph on its center stand.

Stand on left of bike.
Left foot on center stand.
Right hand on rear foot rest, left hand on handlebars.
Push down with foot, pull up and back with hands.

slip foot off of center stand, THROW bike over onto its right side. A lot of the stories so far are about gently dropping in an awkward position....No. I inadvertently chucked this heavy MFer over with all my force!

And lastly, thank lucky stars because bike # 2 in the row of 4 (where Triumph in question was #1) anyways, #2 was pulled forward thus averting an otherwise likely domino-effect

stupidest thing I did with my old street monster was hanging around with some Japanese bike fellows for a while and got into a very bad habit of spinning my bike around on the kickstand....when my Kickstand finially started giving away cause the bolt going into the case had wallowed, I realized I had a problem. I rode home and put the bike on the rear stand and realized I had to do something right away. I borrowed a TimeSert kit from the Wurth rep I knew from work and put that in and all was good from then on out, but damn did it suck when I want to put the kickstand down that 1 time and it started to go over on me. Never again did I spin that Duc or any other on the kickstand.

Broke my wrist mountain biking. Got tired of not being able to ride my motorcycle, so I tried to ride with a cast on. Dropped the bike a low speed, luckily only a scrapped up slider and stator cover.

Decided that the sign that said "PAVEMENT ENDS" was only a suggestion, and continued 6 miles down a logging road before turning back. All this on my new bike, with less than 1000 miles at the time.

Never did more than cover the thing in dirt and dust, but I was doing a LOT of cursing in my helmet, and chanting "stupid, stupid, stupid" in my head.

Lesson learned. My bikes like paved roads.

A loading mishap resulted in me doing a summersault and a half and landing on my neck and shoulders upside down in a pile about 10 feet from my truck.  While this was going on, the triple of my Monster was sliding into the bed by using the bedrail as its guide.  Zero damage to the bike.

JM

Only been riding two seasons, but so far at least once each year I try to start the bike while it is in gear and I'm standing next to it.  So far no damage other than my pride and maybe slightly longer arms after I make a grab for it and get yanked a few feet.

Tried to kill a deer.

Almost got me too.

That sucks, TakeItEast.  Cracked me up a bit since similar thing had happened to me over the weekend.

I was cleaning the garage on Sunday.  I tried to move the bike around to create a little more room to get to a shelf.  Without thinking carefully about how I am manuvering the bike, the bike started to tip over to the right (I was standing to the left of the bike).  Losing balance, I thought "oh crap, I am going down with the bike and landing on top of it". 

That's when I noticed the Triumph Bonneville parked right next to it.  I took my right hand off and grabbed the rear seat grab bar, hoping I can leverage it to lift up the Monster.  ANd then the monster handlebar landed on the back of my right hand, between the knockles and wrist.  SON OF A pregnant dog!

So there I was, leaning on the Monster which was resting on my hand, in danger of tipping both bikes over now.  I gained some footing and managed to picked upt the monster off the Bonnie. 

Right hand swelled up and I couldn't make a fist.  The Wife asked about what happened to my hand.  Do't want to tell her how stupid it was, I just said I sprained it cleaning the garage...   :-[

Year one on my first monster
Thought it was really cool to start my bike while I was standing next to it for a while  [bang]

Until .............leaving work late at night the bike is on a slight hill checked for the neutral light
 fast idle lever is on full as it was winter.
hit the button.......false neutral :o

Bike drops into gear and takes off I lunge after it as it heads for the fence get my hand on the clutch
as it hits the fence and over it goes.
I dived under the bike stopping it from hitting the ground

Only problem now great saved the bike from damage but Im now pinned under the bike with the engine running in gear trying to hold the clutch in
FAARRRKKKKKKKKKK Im yelling my head of until one of the Brazilian kitchenhands  comes out with the garbage and pulls the bike off me.


So embbaressing Mr cool with his new Ducati that looks like a complete make the beast with two backstard.
Lesson 101:    NEVER start your bike when you are not safely seated on it.  [laugh]

Just in case you want some more ideas

http://www.ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=3151.0 (http://www.ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=3151.0)

Oh boy. Where to start, maybe when I first started riding on an old bmw, I got a serious target fixation on a corner and drove into a ditch. No harm done to me, the bike needed some duct tape to get home. I was riding with friends who were experienced riders and decided to show each other how fast they could go, and I didn't want to get lost. Lesson learned.

Last dumb thing I did was get frustrated behind a bunch of Harleys on a good twisty spot in NH, after a few miles I spotted a gravel turn off and went in too hot. The gravel and braking led to the inevitable front wheel deciding to lay down- somehow I managed to get both feet on one side of the bike and surfed along with it trying to keep it up. Scraped up the bikini fairing and bent the brake pedal, but that was nothing compared to what an idiot I felt like with the stream of riders who had all gotten stuck behind the hogs with me who watched the whole thing and pulled over.

No interesting crashes or goofy garage drops. But probably 25+ years ago I was riding my Honda 750 Interceptor on the highway and happened upon a 40 foot cattle trailer filled with 40 feet of cattle. In a classic case of wrong time/wrong place one bovine decided to let loose with the world's loosest bowel movement and I got coated from head to foot with wet cow poop. Couldn't even see through my face shield. It was like hell on a bike. Lesson learned. NEVER EVER follow a cattle trailer!!! [bang]

Would riding off from a stop with the fork lock locked qualify as dumb? [laugh] [laugh] [laugh] [laugh]

It certainly did hurt.

  Woke up one morning in My front yard, with the Neighborhood Kids poking Me with a stick, I then discovered I was pinned under a KZ1000.When I hollared for My roommate the Kids all ran off, appearently they thought I was dead. Several minuites later I was free, leg was numb for an hour, worst damn hangover I ever had...

now THAT sounds like a helluva "hold my beer and watch this" story!!!

that's great  [thumbsup]


mitt

Dumbest thing on my Monster would be coming out of a local watering hole. They had an outdoor beer garden so I had an audience of 10 checking out my bike once I fired it up. So as I'm putting on my gloves with my helmet still on the tank I bring my leg down to sweep up the kickstand when my pant leg catches the shift lever putting it in 1st which lunges it forward 2 feet and kills it. So not having my hands on the bars I smash my nuts into the tank and about blow a nut trying to keep the bike from falling over with just my legs. I left in a hurry after that.

On my old Shadow I took a wrong turn so I was going to cut through a parking lot except there was a curb and small walkway. I figured a 6" tall curb shouldn't be to hard to get over and it wasn't except the walkway was only about 2 feet wide so I ended up bottomed out on my frame. Fortunately it was 11 at night so nobody was around to see me trying to wrestle a 600 pound motorcycle off a curb in the middle of a bank parkinglot.

I learned something from both incidences so I got that going for me.

several submissions ...

1st day ever commuting on the bike: stalled coming away from a red light in busy santa monica blvd traffic.  panicked.  re-started.  let the clutch out too fast and did a massive wheelie in the middle of traffic.

1st gas fill-up: couldn't figure out how to make the pump work on a bike.  gas station attendant had to show me how to hold the spring back to activate the pump.  didn't feel very cool.

pulling out of office parking garage on my new (to me) s2r1k, feeling cool with a small group of people watching.  rev'd the throttle to show off the exhaust.  immediately the engine cut-out.  this was before i took it to speeddog to have that little issue fixed.

just recently ... used my "throttle as horn" technique to alert cars at an approaching intersection so they wouldn't make a left turn in front of me.  except when i revved the throttle, i forgot to pull the clutch in.  went flying thru the intersection with a massive case of whip-lash.

Two for me...

First was with my first bike, met a friend to go riding and we're in his driveway just getting back. Sitting on my bike I take my helmet off and hook on the handlebars, which proceeds to drop to the ground.  Brand new Arai bounced on the concrete, so not thinking I reach down to catch it and the bike tips with me... into his bike... which then tips into his new car!  No damage to either bike, but his handlebar slides down the quarter panel.  Ugly.

Fast forward several years to renting Harleys to tour around Las Vegas area (that could be the dumb part, but there's more).  Never ridden a Harley, only sport bikes so not used to the "quaint" performance characteristics.  Heading out of town I look over at a bank that displays time/temp on the sign out front... 118 degrees F...look back and the light at the corner that the bank is on is now yellow.  No big deal, grab a handful of front brake.  And nothing happens.  Step harder on the rear brake and the backend starts to slide on the hot (and greasy) pavement.  Continue the slide through the now red light and finally stop in the middle of the very large intersection looking at traffic starting at me.  So much for the Harley mystique.   [roll]

A group of us were going out for a ride (cruiser group, I was on my HD).  One of the members of the group is handicapped from a car wreck many years ago.  She rides a Harley Sportster trike.  We stopped at a gas station to fill up before the ride.  I gassed up my bike then went over to hand the nozzle to her so she could fill her tank.  When we were all ready to ride, I picked my bike up off the kickstand (jiffy stand in Harley speak) but to my embarrassment, I got a leg full of gas.  Seems like in my effort to help her fill her tank, I forgot to put my gas cap back on.  To make matters even worse, when I noticed the gas sloshing out I quickly tried to put the bike back on the kickstand to stop the flow.  Harley kickstands are spring loaded to hold them up while riding but have a notch to lock them in the deployed position.  When I had picked up the bike, the kickstand came out of the notch and therefore didn't catch the bike.  It proceeded to fall over against the gas pump.  [bang]

Really early one morning a few years ago, I decided to ride my sweetie's Monster to work since it hadn't been ridden in a while. So I gave it a quick once over to make sure all was good, and noticed that it was a little low on oil. So I added the necessary amount of oil, and then geared up and rode down the street.

As I rode along in our neighborhood, something just didn't seem right....and I noticed that my right foot felt like it was wet...

So I stopped only to discover that in my haste, I had forgotten to put the oil cap back on and I had oil all over my right foot and up my pant leg!!!

[bang]


Oops!! I never did that again!!!

In my defense, it was close to 5am in the morning...

I'm sure that's not the dumbest thing I could have done, but I sure felt like Gomer after that.

I let a friend "try it out."

Yeah, he dumped it. 

Forget it.

I hate the jiffy stand.  I too had my Hardley fall on me in the parking lot of IHOP in front of a Sunday crowd.  The spring picked up the stand as I was moving it into the lock position.  I got cheers and several hands to pick that beast up.  I drove off to eat elsewhere :'(

Long story short: ~60 mile ride through rural Montana in rain and lightning at night at 1.5 x the posted speed limit.   :-\

Dumbest thing I've ever done with my monster?

Spend waaaaaay to much money on mods  [evil]

You'll find no one here who agrees that's dumb.   [roll]   ;D

My dumbest thing didn't end badly or cause any damage but it could have been deadly and was stupid and careless.

I hit a pothole a little while back and it jarred the bike pretty good, but everything seemed fine after that. After a quick initial inspection I couldn't find any damage and the bike still handled fine.

Several days later I was on a wide open road that I could see clearly for miles down the road and zero traffic. I thought "perfect speeding opprtunity" so I gassed it. Got up to around the 140 mph mark and backed off when I started to get near traffic again. No issues.

Later that day I was cleaning the bike and noticed something I missed on my initial inspection after the pothole incident. The front rim was bent! Not just slightly bent either.....the side of the tire is not touching the rim in one spot, only the bottom of the tire bead is sealed to the rim so if pushed the wrong way, the tire could leak and lose pressure. After seeing that, I thought about my high speed burst earlier that day and had a definite "oh shit" moment thinking about what *could have* happened.

Dumb and irresponsible :(

The exception would be my wife and thank goodness she's not on here! [laugh] [thumbsup]

Well, I guess living 2 miles from a paved road will be my entry. The shop I take my 696 to refers to it as 'the one on the dirt road.'  [roll]

The Monster 620 rocks.

Couldve left it running, and just performed a service and adjusted my valves..  Instead I got a wild hair up my ass and this is what happened.  Dumb? perhaps.  I'm liking it so far though!

(http://home.comcast.net/~hotrod408dodge/img298sm.jpg)
(http://home.comcast.net/~hotrod408dodge/IMG_0159.JPG)
(http://home.comcast.net/~hotrod408dodge/IMG_0546.JPG)
(http://home.comcast.net/~hotrod408dodge/IMG_0552.JPG)

 [laugh]

I don't get it   ???  ???


In the kitchen. Classic!  [thumbsup]

Just an inside joke (but not at your expense).

Ah ok. Even if it was at my expense, that's fine too....but I'd like to know why ;)

It's been so long, I'm not sure if I even remember it correctly.  Basically, there was a guy claiming to go 140 mph on his 620.

Eh, people make claims all the time. If you're going fast enough to scare the shit out of yourself, it's easy to exaggerate to give the story more impact.

Dumbest thing I've probably ever done to any bike I've owned was a few weeks ago... The takes the cake for me, overtaking some silly things like over-torquing valve inspection covers and cracking them, forgetting to put on my oil filler bolt after a change etc.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was cleaning the Monster. I noticed quite a lot of grease and baked on crap on the RHS crankcase/clutch cover, I decided I needed to clean it off. Went to get my degreaser but couldn't find any, so I grabbed what I thought was the next best thing - a can of Carby Cleaner. It said "Parts/Throttle Body Cleaner" on it, so I figured it would be fine on the case. I sprayed it on, it was fine for about 10 seconds, then I started to smell a strong wet paint smell... I thought wow, this stuff must be strong!  :-\

Little did I know, that smell was actually the carby cleaner EATING THROUGH my crankcase covers paint... I managed to pick up on this and wash it all off ASAP, it has still left its marks of stupidity though. Not that noticeable, but its back to the bare aluminum in one place near the oil filler cap! Very upsetting as it wasn't even that dirty to begin with! I don't mind if I do something stupid and drop the bike or w/e, but intentionally spraying something onto it which ruined the engine paint was pretty annoying!!! Lesson learned however, I will always me much more careful with cleaning products now that I'm aware the damage they can do!

Great thread idea, rather learn from your mistakes than make them all myself  [thumbsup]

Cheers,

Tom

Not just any M620.  It was a Capirex 620!  :o [laugh]

And they're faster!

Just the other day while throwing a leg over my brand spanking new 500 miles on the clock 2011 796 monster, I somehow managed to snap off my left rear turn signal. make the beast with two backs!!!!!! [bang]

I managed to drop my new 796 in the parking lot at work, bending the front brake lever...I felt soooo stupid.

Ya' know, I don't consider those dumb moments; they are more like whoops moments.

I agree. Those are just whoops. We're talking dumb here not whoops. ;D It's OK to be pissed or feel stupid over a whoops. Dumb can get you hurt or total a bike. [bang]

I was actually on mine when I dropped it and bruised the hell out of my hip.  The parking lot exit here is on a good slope and there's a rail bridge to the left that people like to speed over and it's kinda hard to see them, which is why I always check left at least two or three times.  This time, there was somebody coming over the rise just as I turned my head to pull out/  I had my right foot on the peg and put it down too close to the bike and dropped it on myself...

The dumbest thing I've ever done with my bike............Not ride it