Salbo's post asking about home-made trailers reminded me of a few crashes and lessons learned the hard way many years ago. I hadn't thought about the way a trailer doesn't lean like a 'bike and crashed when taking (or rather not taking) a bend, thankfully slowly. I also crashed when the trailer whip-lashed forward once and decided to flip over taking me and 'bike with it.

Sometimes when we are young (or in my case now, going senile) we do silly things. And sometimes, a few times even, the gods protect us from our misfortune and stupidity.

I thought it may be fun to get some admissions about the silly/lucky things we have done on a bike ... I will start ...

Once the front brake drum disintegrated on my old Honda CB250 as I cruised up to the lights in Cardiff and the back brake was pretty useless anyway so rather than hit the cross traffic at speed I skidded to a halt using my boot soles, literally burnt right through them and fortunately had good socks on ...

Once I was going a bit too fast (!) up the Seven Sisters road in London, came to a roundabout and took a quick zip into the traffic between two trucks which turned out to be one with a trailer, dropped the bike and somehow rode it under the bar, bounced onto the fence (yep, some roundabouts had metal fences back then) and ended up a bit dazed with the bike next to me on my legs and the detached and smashed fuel tank cradled in my arms ... a bloke rushed across and offered me a cigarette as the fuel poured onto my lap ( ciggies were seen as health aids in those days believe it or not) ...

Once a headlight mount broke on my Beezer and bits of it jammed the front wheel at a rate of knots, I flew over the top and landed unharmed on the roof of a soft-top car, think of the odds ...

I have a regular habit of forgetting to close the visor down, once in Maidstone some insect whacked me in the eye when I was riding at speed and I rode straight off the road, down some steps, across the adjacent canal path and onto a barge where I stopped just in time!

I used to smoke a pipe with a metal perforated lid on it sometimes while motorbiking as a student in Oxford, whacky baccy too, I have no idea how I survived that and even hallucinogenics, thank goodness I gave all that youthful stuff up and took to whisky ...

All I have had from these and other incidents is bad gravel rash thanks to always wearing good leather and helmets, and in all cases the 'bikes took little or no repair. Sheesh, we think we are bulletproof .

Come on, own up you lot!