wow...as many can attest I could spend ALL DAY  filling this thread with the boneheaded stuff I do...I think the best one though comes from the webfoot enduro 2009...I think...

so this was my first Enduro and I was pretty out of shape...not as out of shape as I am now...but out of shape... I can through the Gas stop and topped of the tank on my YZ and tooled on down the trail...about 200 yards in I felt this strang coldness on my leg...looked down to find I had manged to ride away without my gas cap...

I made my way back to the pit and my gas cap is nowhere to be found...so I make a tidy little gas cap out of duct tape...I gotta say...at this point i was more than a little proud of myself and very optimistic so down the trail I go. It was a brutal ride the rest of the way but I was doing fine...until the gas started to eat away at the duct tape adhesive...

at first I just had to ride one handed while the other hand held on the rapidly deteriorating duct tape...this led to a fall where I lost the duct tape entirely...wel...no worries...i'll just finish without a gas cap...I'm hardcore like that! I was fine until I came the the very last, very well rutted and bumpy mud section. I went down at least once and managed to thoroughly soak my junk...un detered I soldiered on...didn't i say how hard core I am? So I started to feel this tingling...nay...burning arroind my waste...hhmm...I guess gas can irritate the skin...I'll just toigh it out till the finish...hhhhmmm...the burning is moving down...It is now I am begininng to relize the negative effect gasoline has on tender flesh...OH SHIT MY BALLS ARE ON FIRE!!!

ok, they weren't ACTUALLY on fire...but soaked in gasoline my manhood was in jeopardy. So I did the only thing I could do...I pulled off the trail, dropped my pants and tried to rinse myself off using my CamelBak spigot...


I managed to compose myself and finish the race and all but the emotional scars have healed...sadly that is not even in the top 10 of the dumbest things I have ever done...another time perhaps...

I have found that the older I get the slower I am becoming, and I'm not just talking about the physical ability to move, case in point:

I was changing tires on my KX, with some custom made tire spoons fashioned out of a couple of pry bars that I used back in my iron worker days, real heavy material that could take a pretty good stress load. I removed the rear wheel and toss it up on my work bench which also doubles as the tailgate of my truck, remove the valve core, bleed out the air and break the bead, so far all is good.

I slip the custom spoon behind the tire bead and start to pull on the spoon, tire decides to be stubborn and not pop over the rim, so I lower my body to get a good angle of pull, increase the pressure on the spoon and it slides out of the tire and I punch myself in the face with my custom built, heavy spoon and drop myself to my knees behind the truck. I check myself in the truck mirror, bit of a bloody nose and a cut under my left eye, bleeding a bit, not too bad, but now I'm pissed, no way is that F*&^%#$ tire going to beat me, I've changed hundreds of tires over the years.

I return to the the task of changing out the tire, insert the tire iron  and pull for all I'm worth on the tire iron , boink, out it comes again and I punch myself in the face a second time with the force of a heavyweight prize fighter, down on all fours I'm seeing stars, face hurts like hell and a good sized puddle of blood is forming on the ground under my head, I struggle to my feet and stagger back into the house where I promptly scare the hell out of my wife cuz she thinks I've been jumped in the front yard by the neighborhood thugs, I get her calmed down and explain  what happened and she breaks into hysterical laughter, yeah, love ya too babe.

The good thing is it only took me two punches to the face to learn that one should always push the tire iron any from the body.

Damn I hate this getting old crap!!

Had my truck running, family loaded, headed to Sekiu for a week of fishing. It starts to rain so I decide to top off the window washer fluid, grabbed the gallon jug and filled the one gallon reservior with used motor oil! It was an hour or so later before we were on the road, luckily I hadn't actually pumped any through the lines or onto my windshield.
The next year while we're at Sekiu the wife decides to run into Forks, and since the truck was down to a quarter tank, she gasses it up. She drives about 20 miles and it starts knocking and she suddenly realizes she had put gaoline in my nice Duramax diesel!  She pulled over and called me and a few hours later I had all of the fuel pumped out and doing weed control along the roadway.  Bled the system and filled it with diesel and it's never missed a beat since, and that was about 30,000 mile ago.

Not bike but still dumb, Got in pickup truck to head out for some errends, forgot phone, left it idling in nuetral stick shift and did not set park brake to retrive phone, driveway is on slight incline, returned to see truck had rolled down drive across the street into a ditch.

Luckily no one was passing by at the time!

Another dumb dumb move same truck, was in a hurry to change the oil and filter, thought i was done and started up truck waiting for oil light to go out, damn thats takin a long time better check, forgot to install the filter and all the oil pumped out on ground

My Granfather always told me the quicker you do things the behinder you get. The older I get the more I find this to be true.

Did you guys know that Super Glue will glue your fingers together???  It's True!!

I was told that years ago but I had to test that theory, yup, stuff works as advertised, just a little drop will work, no need to use the entire tube like I did.

Don't put any pressure on the tube when you punture the seal  

Last Saturday I was standing behind my lawntractor.
Needed to warm up the motor.
Reached over the seat to turn the ignition and it started right up.
Unfortunately is was also in reverse.

In my early 20's I ran a shovel,loading a log deck at a sawmill. I worked swing shift and it was my responsibility to fuel the machine at some point during the night. The problem with that was the pump on the fuel truck was painfully slow,so I often had to stay 20 minutes after my shift to fuel. One night something down stream broke down so I pulled the hose up and started fueling the machine. Instead of staying with it,I went off to screw around as 20 year olds will do. Eventually whatever was broken got repaired so I headed back to the shovel,throttled it up,and went back to work. A short time later it dawned on me that I had forgotten something. I stepped out and looked back a the fuel tank,which had NOTHING BUT THE NOZZLE sticking out of it! The first time I swung the machine around it had pulled the hose right off the nozzle with the pump still running! I lucked out because I had walked the machine forward and back at some point and had stopped with the track on the hose. That happened sometime after I had pumped a large amount of diesel onto the ground. That's just one of the many stupid things I've done over the years.

I was fueling up my work truck one windy, rainy rainy night at a fuel station without the over head cover. Once I started pumping fuel I jumped back into my cab to stay dry. I was watching the meter out my window and watched my 30 gallon gas tank take 30... 31.... 32.... 33 gallons of gas. I thought to myself "These SOBs are ripping people off!!!" Then I got out of my truck in rage only to find the nozzle on the ground gushing gas everywhere, luckily it all flowed straight to their oil water separator.

Scared and embarrassed I just wanted to leave, but I pulled in there on fumes and needed gas so I started over. Took 28 gallons the second time, so it fell out right after I started pumping the first time, right when I slammed my truck door.

The worst part was I had to call the office and tell them what happened so they wouldn't think I was stealing gas when I pumped 60 gallons of gas into a pickup.

This is a great thread.

A couple years ago I was putting in some new linkage bearings.  My next door neighbor came over and distracted me with some news about another neighbor.  He was drinking beer and probably had been all day, given his slurred speach, and offered me one for listening to his rant.  I took a couple sips and finished greasing the bearing and installing the shock.  He came back to yack some more and mid conversation I took another swig.  Only this time it was something different.  I spewed out a giant gulp of anti-freeze.

Prior to that day I had been using an old beer bottle to top off my coolant before rides.  I had set my fresh beer next to the old beer bottle and didn't make the distinction until after it was in my mouth.  I've learned my lesson.  Only drink beer in a can.

These are great, let's hear some more. i wish i could come up with one that is even slightly amusing. hmmm......i did change my oil one time years ago and forgot to put the bolt back in the oil pan ( 5 qts of oil in the road below ) but that is kids stuff compared to these stories.

Joe

I also have had an oil change mishap. Lol In highschool I had one period in the afternoon that was a "work study",meaning we worked for an hour a day at one of the local businesses for school credit. My work study was at the mini mart in town. My normal duties were stocking the cooler,bagging ice,general crap that the owners didn't want to do. One day my chore was to change the oil on the store owners Honda Civic. No big deal,as I had been changing oil for years. Everything went as planned and as I finished adding the new oil a couple of my buddies showed up and I started BSing them. It was time to head back to school so I closed up the hood,told the owner "see ya" and away I went. The problem was I had started bullshitting and forgot to put the filler cap back on. They drove quite always smelling oil burning before the figured it out. Made one hell of a mess under the hood too. Lol That was the last time I did an oil change in a mini mart parking lot.

This is kind of a long story, but I think it might top the list, so I'm going to go with it...

In 2006 I was doing track days on the road bikes (I have dirt bike stories too, but none this crazy) and had a pretty unfortunate accident at Pacific Raceways that left a Repsol edition CBR100RR looking like this:


The total cost of the parts to bring her back to life was pretty ridiculous, so I was sort of buying new parts and fixing her up as I got the money.  After about a month of this, I finally had enough money to buy the last parts I would need to get her all back together, so I ordered them up.  I also scheduled a big ride around the North Cascades Loop with some friends of mine for two weekends later.  So, although I knew I would have enough time to get everything finished, I was definitely in a hurry to get it done.

Unfortunately, though, I was working 12 hour shifts at the plant, so I wasn't getting home until 7:00 in the evening and had to be back up in the morning at 4:30.  So not a lot of time to wrench on the bike.  My parts showed up early in the week, so I got most of what was left to install done pretty soon after.  The only catch was that I was missing engine mount bolts.  I had frame sliders installed during the crash, and the bolts were destroyed.  Had no idea what I'd done with the stock ones.  Didn't find out until I got my order that the bolts were backordered.  So on Tuesday or Wednesday I ordered some titanium bolts from Racebolts.com because it was the only place I could find that I was sure would deliver on time.  In the meantime, I went to the hardware store to buy some plain ol' carbon steel M12 bolts just as a stopgap so I could limp the bike to the shop for new tires.

Unfortunately, when I got the hardware store bolts home, I discovered they were the wrong thread pitch (1.5 instead of 1.25).  So I tossed them somewhere (don't even remember where) and decided that I'd just get everything else on the bike done and leave the mid-plastics off until I got the titanium bolts in the mail and could install them.  It was late summer, and the weather was awesome, and I didn't have a garage at that particular rental house, so I was working on the bike in the gravel parking area behind my house and just throwing a bike cover on when I was done for the night.  It had sprinkled a couple of days earlier, so I had the bike pulled up right to the back of the house so the wide eaves would mostly cover it.  Which is pretty much how I left it Wednesday night: I wanted to get the bike as close to finished as possible, and a couple odds and ends took longer than expected, so I finally pulled the cover over the bike at 1:30 and headed to bed.  It was a really nice night, so I just left the tools I was using, the last remaining body panels, and the screws and hardware to mount them lined up in order of need on either side of the bike.

I slept fitfully and then got up with my 4:30 alarm clock and headed to work.  Something rubbed me the wrong way as I passed the bike on the way to my car, but I was way too tired to put a finger on it.  It wasn't until I got home and took a closer look that I started to really scratch my head.  For starters, none of the tools or screws or anything were left out.  There was the bike, cover on like I'd left it, but no tools.  The folding chair that I'd been sitting on while working was still there, and there was my torque wrench and the bike's shop manual sitting on it.  That was strange, though, because my torque wrench was a tool I hadn't had out the previous night...  I went down into my basement where my toolbox was, and there was a paper luch bag sitting on top of the tool box.  I opened it and found all of the fasteners I had left out inside.  Then I opened my toolbox and all tools were accounted for and in their proper place.  Except for one largish socket that was on top where it shouldn't be...

My first reaction was to get pissed off at my roommate: "Why'd you pick up all of my stuff and put it away?  I wasn't done working on that!"

"Dude," he replied.  "I didn't touch anything out there.  Why would I?"

Had the same conversation with my girlfriend (now wife).  She gave me pretty much the same answer.  So then I was left with no explanation except some neighborhood vandals messing with me.  But who messes with someone by cleaning up after them?

It finally dawned on me that there was only one possible explanation: I had done this!  In my sleep!  It was kind of terrifying to think about.  But I laugh it off, go back to bed, and wait for my engine mount bolts to arrive.

Wait, you thought this story was over?  Oh no...

So fast forward a few days.  Titanium bolts arrive.  They're awesome.  I race down the stairs to my bike and yank off the cover to install these bolts and go for my first ride in months.  There she was, just as I remembered her.  Mid fairings off, everything else shiny and new.  So I grabbed the right bolt (they were different lengths) and bend down to thread it in... and couldn't find where it went!  I'm scratching my head, looking around, wondering what the hell I was missing.  Then the moment of dread descends upon me.

I couldn't find the engine mount bolt hole because there was already a bolt in it.  There were already bolts on both sides!  Oh.  Dear.  God.  Where were those hardware store bolts with the wrong thread pitch?...  It's at this point I start noticing just how screwed up the scene really is.  I start really looking around.  I notice that the bike is a good two or three feet further from the house than I had left it when I went to bed Wednesday night.  I notice that the Pit Bull forward facing rear stand the bike was jacked up on was under the bike backwards.  I notice that the torque wrench sitting on the folding chair is adjusted to exactly the proper torque for lower engine mount bolts...

So I go down to my toolbox and grab a breaker bar and the correct socket for removing the bolts--the out of place socket on the top, of course.  I had to lean on the bar with all my weight to break the bolts loose (turns out I hadn't forgotten the Loctite), and even after that it took about 80 ft.lb. on every turn to get each bolt out.  Little bits and pieces of aluminum threads from my engine block sprinkled down as the bolts came out.  It was a mess.  Oh, and the unequal length bolts were even installed on the correct side.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the only conclusion I can come to that explains what happened that night:

I got out of bed in my sleep at somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning, walked outside, took the cover off my bike, dropped it off the rear stand, rolled it back a few feet, flipped the rear stand around, and jacked the 450 pound bike back up.  In my sleep.  Then I grabbed my toolbox and shop manual out of the basement, found the hardware store bolts somewhere, found the proper socket for them, looked up the proper torque for engine mount bolts, set the socket wrench up, then returned back to the bike where I proceeded to machine improper bolts into my engine block on both sides,  In my sleep.  This probably required about 80 ft.lb. per pull for about five minutes on each bolt.  Then I picked up all of my tools and put them away in their correct spot downstairs.  Then went in the house and got a little paper baggie to put all of the loose screws in, rolled it up, and set it on top of my toolbox.  Then I put the cover back on the bike, called it a night, and returned to bed.  

I didn't then--and never have had--ANY recollection of any of this.

Oh, and I sleep in the nude, so I bet a video tape of this incident would be even funnier than the written version, because I certainly didn't find any clothes out of place...

So be nice to me on this forum, because I may well be the founder of your local Fight Club chapter!

I'll leave you with a little photographic evidence I cobbled together at the time to illustrate my little "Project Mayhem" night:

Huh, I resized that first picture when I wrote that post, but it didn't stay resized.  Sorry about the big pic.

geddyt, what can I say you top them ALL...That deserves a whole thread in and of itself!

trying to get a buddy's bike started i once grabbed the chain lube instead of carb cleaner. yep, an intake full of chainlube will definitely give you some pucker factor. she worked fine after realizing the error and emptying a whole can of carb cleaner into it to flush out the chain lube. fortunately i realized my error before kicking it over. still a tense few minutes nonetheless.

Well at least good thing you realized before kicking into the actual motor!!! eek.

geddy T... i almost needed popcorn for that one... I have to say, just for funs sakes... you know what I thought you were going to say (and i absolutely wonder if it is still the case)

I wonder if your bike was stolen, and the individuals swapped out your fresh motor for a clapped out/older motor, then returned your bike to your place.

I'm being serious!  I wonder if that happened.

Yeah, but then how would they get into my house to get the bolts that were driven into the block?  I'm pretty sure I had left them inside.  Trust me, I thought long and hard for ANY explanation that didn't involve me traipsing around at night in the nude destroying my freshly rebuilt bike!

 geddyt, on 13 February 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

Sir,I'm going to need you to step away from the bong…. Haha What a wild story. My grandpa used to sleep walk a bit,so I totally believe it could happen. But start wearing some drawers to bed for the sake of us that may be driving past your house in the wee hours,will ya? Lol

So this one time several years ago, I was working on my jeep getting it ready for a trip.

I had been working on it all morning, tuneup stuff, plugs wires and whatnot. Adjusting timing, starting and restarting the rig many times as I progressed.

I was about done with my tinkering when the wife walks out to the shop to check on my progress.

Eager to show her my success, I reached into the jeep and turned the key.  Good little jeep jumped to life immediately, but was now somehow in gear and lurching towards my sweetie!

She retreated back to a workbench behind my tubing bender, while I tried to get the beast stopped. I remember making a few little skips next to the jeep before I managed to get a foot on the brake and kill the motor.

The jeep ended up knocking the bender loose from the floor and it and the jeep were real close to on top of the wife!

Well, as well that ends well I guess, and it didn't take too long before we could look back at the incident and laugh.......