Reply to Your worst tour experience..

OK folks, wanting to bring a little levity to the board for a couple days maybe..

Disclaimer: most riders will find hard luck stories while out on tour somewhat comical (depending on the circumstances of course), most of us have been there at some point..so suck it up and spill the awful details.

Please chime in with tours you've went on where Murphy's Law totally took over.

Did the weather go from bad to worse? Lightning, tornado or worse.

Did you lose you ID or wallet while riding, not to realize it until much later in the day another 60 miles down the road somewhere..

Did your bike give you huge headaches??

Did you lose your route map while in an unfamiliar area??

Did you get to a point where you just had to cut your losses, abandon ship and discontinue your tour??

OK speed I'll bite. My story isn't really that bad. I ride lot over 1,500/m a season. One of the rides is always a summer run Pgh. to DC. I am notorious for getting lots of flats. I run my tires up to the limit, and ride them hard .Needless to say my ride partners rag the daylights out of me about all the flats. I average one flat per day on The Ride. And 1 flat per week in season. Tires.com loves me.

My worst experience happened before my rear end ever even hit the saddle. I loaded my bike onto my car's rear-mount bike rack and headed off to the trail. When I reached the trail, I found a smoldering mass of melted rubber at the bottom of the rear wheel - the tire had been too close to the car exhaust and literally melted. Luckily there was an open bike shop where they chiseled the melted rubber off of the rim and set me up with a new tire. All was good after that!

Not bad so far..thanks guys.

Along the lines of Ray's post, has anyone used a rear mounted rack system on their car and had their bike fall off while in transit?? Did a strap snap or work its way loose? Did the whole rack collapse off the car? That would be pretty bad karma and possibly not something anyone would want to own up to, but who knows..

Also, in a similar vein, were you using a rear rack system for your bike and in transit to your trail ride got rear-ended and the bike or bikes mounted there were destroyed??

I don't really have any hard luck stories, I have been pretty lucky so far....

Did have one interesting incident at Ohiopyle a couple of years back. My kids and some friends went rafting down the Yough. My wife and I rode from Ohiopyle to Confluence and back. We decided to get a bite to eat at the Ohiopyle House Cafe, out on the deck. I had the bikes on the rack and had moved the van up near the visitors center, in the big gravel parking lot. There is only a half dozen cares or so as it was early evening and most people were gone. So we are eating when an old beat up car pulls into the parking lot with two 20 somethings. They get out and stand around their car and casually look at the cars in the lot. After a short time they get in their car and leave. 15 - 20 minutes later they pull back in right next to our van. They hop out of their car and go right for our bikes, a Gary Fisher and a Specialized. They were strapped in the rack and bungee corded together. They started to yank on the bikes when I jumped up and ran to the railing and yelled at them. This got their attention but really startled the other people eating. It took the other folks a second or two to realize what was going on. The two 20 somethings were trying to figure out where to voice was coming from. Right after I yelled at them, another,much larger gentleman got up, stood beside me and started yelling at them too. The boys finally figured out where the voices were coming from and stared at us for a moment or two and hopped back in their beater and tore out of there.

I really don't know what they were thinking. They couldn't have taken the bike(s) in their car. I guess they could have tried to ride it somewhere but they didn't look like they would have made it too far. Maybe it was just something to do. When we finished eating and went back to the van, you could see their handprints on the rims.

I was pretty upset at the time but just laugh know when I think o

Lost the last sentence. Should read -
I was pretty upset at the time but just laugh now when I think about the look on their faces when they realized there was a small crowd of diners watching them try to steal our bikes.

And it was cars, not cares, in the parking lot.

OK, mine happened this year. I started off in Boston Pa. on the GAP and was doing fine until Rockwood Pa.It started raining hard that night and ended up being 2 inches of rain. I was bragging how I had sprayed the tent with silicone so it shouldnt leak. Leaked awful! Tent was full of rain the next morning. I manged to get everything dried out but because of the weather being only 60 with rain all day in the forecast I stayed at camp in Rockwood. The next day I left with my destination being Cumberland. A mile into the ride I noticed my chain jumping a bit. I thought the derailer might need some adjustment so I guessed I could make it to Cumberland then get it tuned up there. Well, 5 miles into the ride the chain breaks. No extra chain,tools. nothing. So I push the bike back to Rockwood 5 miles. The funny part is I had told people along the trail that as long as I didnt break a spoke or chain I would be fine. Turns out I got it fixed quick at the bike shop along the trail and was back on the road the next day.Not fun when its actually happeninig but when its over it makes for a good story. I was lucky enough to film the whole thing, my expressions, ( I edited the cuss words) all of it. I did make it to Harpers Ferry and would do it all again tomorrow.