first bike was like an `80 Honda 110 3wheeler. (the kind you have to pull start for 50years to get it started when it's cold out.) I'm about 10 or 11yo. So I'm out riding around, climbing some big dirt hills at a dump. So I decide to ride up this really big one my friend keeps going up. I get almost to the top, and the engine has nothing left. (I'm about a foot from the top, that's how close I was.) I grab the breaks, and just sit there for a moment, trying to decide wtf I'm gonna do next. I quickly remember that I don't have any front breaks. So I decide I'm gonna let it roll back down, and when I start going to fast, I'll just use the breaks to slow me down. This happens once. I tap the breaks, and the front tire comes up. Luckily, I'm able to bring it back down. I look behind me, and I've moved a whole 4 feet. There's about 30 more to go. This is when I decide, it's either me or the bike. So I bail off the side, and start flipping down the hill, and the bike starts flipping down the hill next to me. When I get to the bottom, the gas tank is over here, the seat+rear plastics are over there, and the bike is somewhere in the middle. I put the tank back on, tossed the seat back on, pulled a few times, and she started right back up. That one wasn't too painful, but I thought it was funny.

 

Sorry about the length of this. This is from some stories I wrote about my misspent youth, part of it aboard a '72 Yamaha MX 250, back in the 70's.

A crash story.

One of my favorite mishaps occurred as I was about to prove the absolute wisdom of motorcycle ownership to my Dad. The horses got out and had run down towards Bridges road across the front field. The field had recently been plowed, and would be extremely difficult to run through. Dad yelled to me. “Alright, get on that bike of yours and go run the horses back down to the corral. I’ll head ‘em in this way when you bring ‘em back.”
I was ready. I had my riding boots on, my helmet on, man, I was going to show him. I jumped on and ripped down our road to the far edge of the field. As I slowed down, the bike felt kind of funny. The throttle was sticking a little. I turned onto the gravel on Bridges road, in a hurry to intercept the horses before they went over the hill towards the creek. I cracked the throttle wide open. It stuck.
Right about then I realized the usefulness of a kill switch, an item I did not have. I moved quickly to shut the bike down. Now, when you’re at idle standing still, the process of holding the brake and letting out the clutch stalls the engine fairly easily. But I was at wide-open throttle in first gear already, grabbing and pulling at every lever on this beast. I pulled in the clutch and got the thing stopped, with the open piped engine screaming at peak rpm. I held the brakes with everything I had, and popped the clutch.
In a perfectly composed field test, I proved instantly my theory that this bike was way more engine than chassis. The back tire busted loose, spun wildly, and I hung on. The only way to kill it was by getting into a higher gear. I speed shifted and grabbed more brake. Same results. Third gear! This is getting stupid, I thought, and I held onto the bucking, wailing cycle with all my strength. Fourth gear! I was digging a hole with the back tire, which was now doing about 60 mph and firing a roost of gravel halfway to Bingaman’s place.
What a sight this must have been. A skinny nineteen year old kid hanging on to an overpowered motorcycle in a high gear at full throttle, with both heels planted in the dirt, the bike hopping and pitching all over the place. Out of options, I let go.
Like being fired out of a slingshot, the bike took off at full-throttle fourth gear speed. It shot straight down the road for about sixty feet, veered off to the right through the ditch, and slammed into an old barbed-wire fence. Just like a cartoon, the wildly spinning back wheel became a kind of crazy motorized fence stretcher, and reeled up about a mile of barbed wire around the bike before the motor died. There I stood, sweating and panting, my beloved motorcycle wound up in barbed wire and suspended two feet off the ground, and the horses were still out. I looked back at the house. Dad was watching, mystified. He pointed at the horses. I took off running across the soft, plowed field, in my heavy riding boots, and chased the horses all the way back on foot. Sucking large amounts of wind, I looked up to see Dad was just shaking his head. “I told ya, but you’d never believe me.”