Let's hear the most embarrassing thing that ever happened with your bike.

 

I once stumbled across a biker bar I had never been to way outside of town.  I pulled in trying to look real cool, taking off my helmet and gloves and then dis-mounting my bike.  Sure wish I would have remembered to put the stand down.

This could get interesting. My most embarrassing moment was after I transferred from San Diego, CA to Bremerton, WA I had been getting over 130 miles out each tank full of gas. One day I go to leave work, bike parked in the front of the waterfront where all the bikes parked. I can't get the bike started. Have to go get a trailer and take it to the dealer that is a 6 hour trip here in Washington.
Verdict: Bike was out of gas with 90 on the tank! It was an expensive trip to the dealer and quite embarrassing when they told me it was all fine just needed gas. And I had put 80,000 miles on these Big Dogs.

A few years ago I decided to go for a ride with my oldest son.  Being a dirt bike rider, he hadn't riden much on the street, and he was riding Laura's Suzuki Marauder for the first time.  We stopped for breakfast at Cook's Corner (a local biker hangout).

As we were leaving we had to manuver our way past a line of bikes and do a 180 at the end of the line.  He was in front and just as we were both in the middle of the 180 someone stepped in front of him.  He hit his front brake hard with the handle bars turned and the bike went down.  Of course since it was my son I jumped off to help and the bike up, but forgot to put my stand down.  Now there we were in the middle of a parking lot full of bikes with both of ours on the ground.

I have a sticker on my helmet that says "turn the gas on stupid". It was given to me last year at bike week after trying to get the bike started in the middle of a crowd of 300 at Hooters. Damn near ran the battery down trying to get it started-with the pet**** on "off". When I realized what was going on, I dismounted and made a big show of checking all the mechanicals, battery, etc.(fully knowing what I had done). Got back on and miraculously the bike started. I'm guessing that of the 300 people, 150 thought I was an awesome mechanic and the other 150 knew exactly what happened. Couldn't fool my bro's though. 30 minutes later at the next stop, I had my new helmet sticker.

My buddy had his Shadow standing in his front yard, so when he was trying to do a u-turn in the yard with his truck, I hopped on the bike to move it.

 

I flipped the kickstand up, took two steps and the front tire hit a mole hill and I flopped over. 

 

I feel better that I'm not the only one who has laid a bike down that wasn't running.

 

To this day, when one of my friends hurts themselves in a less than genius matter, its affectionately referred to as "pulling a Frankie"

I don't ride, so I have never had the opportunity to drop my own bike like the rest of you.  But I have managed to cause other bikes to go down.

We were at a poker run where all the bikes were parked really close together, and we were parked next to a bike that had pretty high handle bars.  Our bike was a little more forward in the line then his so the handle bars on his bike were about even with where I sat on hubby's bike.  When I got on my purse strap got hooked on the handle bars of the bike next to us, and of course I didn't know.  When hubby pulled out it was a total mess.  I was yanked off the bike, hubby went down and so did the bike next to us that I was hooked to.

Luckily I was not hurt, hubby's bike had no damage, and the other guys bike had only a bent clutch lever, which of course we paid for.  The guy was a big rough looking biker type, and I thought he was going to be pissed, but he was more concerned about whether I was hurt then his bike.

In 8th grade I played on the football team. After practice one day, with most of the team standing around, I jump on my 125. As I try to turn the wheels straight I fall over. I forgot to unlock the forks.

First time riding to Sturgis...got to the house we were staying at not even in the driveway 5 minutes and dumped my bike in front of all the others (we were sharing the house with 6 other people) BUT..next day rode over to Deadwood and parked in the bank lot. . got ready to leave and once again I dumped it. At that time I owned a 1100 honda shadow...bike was to big and to heavy so I decided to get rid of it...bought my sporty 2 years later.

I was leaving the local biker bar and I figured I would be real cool and take off kind of hard so everyone would hear my nice sounding exhaust. It would have been much cooler if I had buckled my helmet so I didn't have to go back and get it out of the middle of the street.

My most embarrassing moment on my bike was when I left the house with my backpack just sitting on the passenger seat. It is amazing how it stayed there until I got out into traffic before tumbling to the street. I had to turn around, go back past it, turn around again and then park my bike on an angle in the center lane of a busy street so that I could pick up all the stuff that had spilled out. Luckily nothing important got broken or lost. I did get some comments, whistles, and cat calls while searching the street for my stuff.

I was washing the bike one day and Penny decided to help, so she grabed the Armorall and started to shine up the seat. A couple of friends stopped by and wanted to go for a ride. Well you guesed it, Just as we were pulling out of the driveway I droped the clutch and off went my wife right in the middle of the street.. The only thing that got hurt was her pride and now she never ever puts ANYTHING on the seat besides her butt.

It's cool to have such good input on a topic like this...Big smiles as I read through the posts...  Used to hang out at a "hardcore" clubber site on the net and they would NEVER go balls in and admit when they screwed up (although we've all done it at one time or another)
MY most embarassing event occurred the first time I ever tried to get my motorcycle license. Made it through the written portion of the test and went out with the DMV lady for the riding part. In Illinois you have a series of maneuvers you have to complete in a large "box" on the DMV parking lot. I made it all the way to the last test... The test was a "sudden stop" test. You were s'pose to get the bike up to 35 and then bring the bike to a controlled stop in a small box. The test before this was a "quick swerve" test in which you get up to speed, and swerve from one "lane" to another. Well, BRAINCRAMP happened and midway through the "sudden stop" test, my brain slipped a cog and I attempted to SWERVE..... Needless to say, I swerved in mid BRAKE, high sided and ended skidding into the box with the bike on top of me... The DMV lady came running over to me, asking if I was OK....Gas was pouring out all over me, my brand new helmet was scarred up and my bike was wrecked.... I told the lady I was alright and after getting the bike up, she reminded me that since I had crashed I had automatically failed the test (duh)... I rode the bike home, sans license and signed up for the MSF rider course. I'm pleased to report that about 300,000 miles later I have NOT attempted tom swerve in mid brake again. Sometimes lessons have to hurt to be learned...

Reading SpeedwayFan story reminded of an 1983 Kawasaki I used to ride way back when. Instead of putting the kickstand down like Speedway did I forgot to put my kickstand up. This bike didn't have safety cutoff switch build in the kickstand. Luckily; all the turns were right turns. My buddy stopped me right before a serious left turn. I would have been really embarrassed then. Ouch..

I'm not very tall nor do I have a wide stance, so I had to modify my bike to fit me. On May 1st I let someone ride my bike and he totalled it. I already had my trip scheduled and was supposed to leave on June 3rd so I didn't have a lot of time to replace my bike or get used to a new one. I found a bike online that was in body style a match to mine but had a bigger engine. A few people that I knew questioned if I could handle it because it was a SV1000s and I had an SV650s but then I had others who told me the bigger engine would be better equipped to handle the kind of road trip I was preparing to take. So, I decided to take the SV1000s and hoped I would be ok. I was driven to pick up the bike and I rode it the 70 miles home. Originally I'd thought I'd drive it home then take it out for a few hours to get a feel for it. But within a few turns the height of the bike and heavier weight made me decide to drive it straight to my shop and have it lowered before I took it on a joy ride. My shop put lowering links on it among other things and I picked up the bike days before my road trip. Coming out of the shop it's a busy road with short visiblity to the left. I was going to take a right but because of oncoming traffic I had to stop.There was a slant in the lot at the place where I stopped so when I went to put my foot down the bike tilted more than I was expecting and the weight was heavier than what I was used to so I struggled for a couple seconds before gravity took over and down went the bike with me on it. The guys at the shop saw the whole thing happening and came running as I was scurrying out from under the bike. The looks on their faces as they were running at me and pulling the bike up will stay with me for a while. They were asking if I was ok, which I was, but I was mortified that I'd dropped the bike right in front of them all. Dropping the bike is bad enough, but I would have preferred to do it in front of strangers than in front of the guys at my shop who I'd have to see again.

We're glad you didn't get hurt A.G., those bikes can be heavy when they fall on you even at low speed. I got a broken leg setting my bike down at a complete stop a few years back.

They say if you haven't dropped your bike at least once, you haven't been on it enough!

You know Lucky you're supposed to make the story sound a little better. If you broke your leg at a complete stop, the story you tell is... "You were running from the law when you hit some oil in a turn. And even with the broken leg you managed to out run the law."

There now doesn't that sound better?

Everybody has dropped their bike if they have been riding for any length of time.
I had just spent several months reworking my bike over the winter, engine, tranny, Brand new paint job w/ some airbrushing. Having done around 60% of the work myself I was more than proud of the bike. Went to a party and decided to make a grand entrance so stood on my seat and waved as I passed the first time by the party. As I returned back the street was full of cages so decided to park in the yard, went to go over the curb, since my bike was lowered it hit the frame, as I went a little wobbly and slide laying my bike over in the yard. No injury to my bike or me since the yard was still soft from a rain the day before.

My most embarrassing moment with a bike was when I was in Florida and borrowed my friends Kawasaki to ride around while I was there. I was in Key West outside of Sloppy Joe's bar, where there are typically a number of bikes parked, and its an open bar so everyone inside can see outside.

Well I went to leave, started the bike and as soon as I started to let the clutch out, the bike died. I must have done this twenty times in a row with everyone watching. Finally someone came over and informed me that on a Kawasaki, if the kick stand is down and you let the clutch out, the bike kills the engine. Guess that's a good safety feature...IF YOU KNOW ABOUT IT!

Two months ago I traded my 2002 Road King in for a 2009 Ultra Classic and I was really proud of the new bike. The only thing was that I had never had floorboards for the passenger on a bike before. I headed back to the dealer that weekend to meet a few friends for a ride and they were looking forward to seeing my new ride. So here I come into the parking lot on my new bike and with my wife on the back and went to make a u-turn and put my foot down and my foot got caught under the rear floorboard and the pavement. Down I went, I thought I had broke a couple of toes, but the worst part was seeing my new bike laying on its side. There must have been 30 people there and about half came to help me pick up the bike, and to tell me that, even laying down, they liked my new bike.

I have two, and I don't know which was more embarrassing.

One.  I was using my buddy's Kawasaki Vulcan while he was on deployment and I was out cruising around one afternoon.  I was getting thirsty so I pulled into one of my favorite watering holes, a local go-go bar.  As I pulled into the parking lot there was a crowd out front, dancers, bartenders and patrons.  I did a very nice u-turn in the very narrow parking lot and pulled into an open space, veryone was impressed with my riding prowess.  I pulled off my helmet and gloves and leaned the bike toward the kick-stand that wasn't down.  Luckily I'm not exactly a small guy and I managed to catch it before it fell all the way over, but the crowd of 20 or so saw me and nobody was impressed anymore.

Two.  Two days after I picked up my brand new Triumph I took it to work to show off.  My good friend came with me to see the bike as I was about to leave.  He had owned an old Triumph chopper back in the day and we were talking about how the controls were on the "correct" sides of the new bikes.  Looking back I probably should not have been bragging about having it all down pat.  I straddled my scoot and started her up, saying later to my friend I kicked it into first and she immediately died.  Not only do the new Triumph's have the controls on the "correct" sides, but they also have safety devices to keep you from taking off with your kick-stand down.  He called me a rookie and I felt like a jack-ass.
 

I'm glad I found this site.Now I can print off some of these stories and my friends will leave me alone.Never done the kickstand trick but the same thing happens when your at a stop light and forget to put your feet down and wonder why the wolds going sideways.

This was back when I was young and stupid (I'm not young anymore). There were a bunch of us who used to ride dirt bikes up near the lake not too far from my house. Usually after a day of riding we would have a fire by the lake and drink some beers. Of course every now and then one of us would get on the bike and do some donuts or a wheelie, or something stupid. Well my famous trick was to ride toward the edge of the lake, where it was about a 5 foot drop to the water which was about 10 feet deep right there, and just before I got to the edge I would lock the back brake, skid sideways, and then jump on the throttle doing a 1/2 donut about a foot from the lake.

Yep, you guessed it. Got just a little too close one time and went right over the edge. Both the bike and I hit the water making a big splash and of course getting a big cheer. I went back the next day with a truck and pulled the bike out, which believe it or not ran just fine after it all dried out. For years I was known as "Splash".