Did you ever:

Let's face it. However good we think we are, we've all had those moments that you helplessly watch as they unfold ahead of you, and which you can do sod all about. Usually they end in a crunch and a whimper, often accompanied by a sharp pain in the wallet immediately afterwards. The one factor unique to all of these unplanned happenings is the resulting humiliation. If you didn't feel a total tart afterwards, it wasn't a big enough disaster. Of course it helps if you have an audience, willing to pass on the news to your mates. But cock-ups happen to everyone, so maybe your mates have got a few secrets themselves.

If you have a suitable tale to add to this pile of woe, please email it to me at markwaters@lineone.net . Anonymity will be preserved if you wish. Only restrictions are that this is meant to be funny, so I won't put in anything that involved the participants in life threatening injuries or worse. Anyone who wants to have an "I've got more steel pins in my body than you" competition can start their own site!

I left the steering lock on, and rode a mile only ever turning right. Then I crashed up the kerb and through the door of a chip shop, when trying to take the first left turn, finding the bike wouldn't go that way - Read the whole shameful story here

I did the same thing two weeks later outside a mate's house with all his neighbours watching!

Ever hold your bike upright by gripping one end of the bars, only to find that the grip was sliding off, and watch the bike slowly fall over and crunch?

Watch somebody else do the same, and try not to laugh?

After refitting the carbs, find your bike wouldn't start? Get a mate to give you a bump start, only to find when the engine fires that the throttles are jammed wide open, firing you up on one wheel, out of a junction , and across a main road before you manage to find the kill switch?

Go to overtake a line of cars up a hill, only to have the throttle cable break, just after you'd passed the first car?

Fall off on ice, see your boss driving towards you, wave for a hand, and watch him wave back and drive past?

Ever doze off while riding your bike on a cold wet windy night, and wake up five miles down the road, unable to remember how the hell you got there?

I went touring, only to have a rectifier fail and drain the battery charge, making the engine cut in and out every time the indicators flashed.

Then tried to get back from Hawes in Yorkshire to Leeds without any battery power. Got caught in the middle of Skipton town at traffic lights. Ever tried to hold the engine at 8000RPM to stop it dying, while trying to look real casual?

While trying to kick start your Kettle ('cos the battery was too flat to turn over on the electric start) not realise you were leaning over more and more until you were lying with it across your left leg (like John Wayne after his horse has just been shot out from under him ) in an empty set of lock up garages. While wondering what to do next, cos you just can't lift the effing thing off your leg, you feel the damp and smell the petrol.....funny were the strength comes from init?

Take the sidecar off and go solo for a day. Pull up and stop tight on the right side of a taxi at a set of red lights, and forget to put your feet down? the bike slowly leaned and trapped my leg against the drivers door so I couldn't move, my boot was trapped on the peg, he could not get out, and the cowhorns stopped him pulling down his window down. The real embarrassment was trying to explain the situation to people crossing the road, and begging them for some help.