Like TwoShots said, dropping a bike in your driveway is distressing, not embarrassing.
You want embarrassing? Let me tell you about embarrassing.
Last week, I pulled into a parking spot in a shopping center that I go to all the time - I've shopped there for over 30 years - that has a drainage grate in the very middle of it. I can now tell you that this is the only spot in this lot with a drainage grate in it. The drainage is facilitated by having that grate be at the bottom of a concave depression, like the bottom of a little valley. Ha ha.
I may or may not have ever parked in this particular spot before in the lot, but I can tell you I'd never parked in it on a motorcycle. Because when I rolled my luggage laden DL650 over this depression as I parked, I suddenly realized that the center of the bike (right where my feet were) was about 4 inches further from the ground than the front or rear wheel was. I discovered this just as I was about to put my left foot down to kick down the kickstand to get off of the bike. (I had even already put the bike into neutral!)
Frantically trying not to tip over, I quickly kicked it back into first gear and accelerated forward past the concavity so my foot could reach the ground. But now my rear wheel was at the very bottom of the depression... And motorcycles, unlike cars, DON'T HAVE A REVERSE GEAR. I couldn't go forward out of the spot, either: the spot had a bumper at the end, and past the bumper (if I were to rocket over it) was a brick wall, and my front wheel was already up against the bumper. Riding off to the side was impossible, too, as both adjacent spots were occupied by cars.
So. Now what?
The normal thing to do would have been to get off of the bike and push it backwards through the dip. But I was really afraid I'd drop the bike while getting off of it because I was not exactly at the center of the dip, in rolling past it I was sort of diagonally stradding it. And my bike had about 50 lbs. of luggage on it that it doesn't usually have on it, because I was geared up for a multi-day road trip.
So I opted to try to rock the bike backwards out of the depression with my body weight. Since all my luggage was behind me in a full top case, strapped down on the pillion or as soft luggage on the sides, this was not easy. I went forward as much as possible to let momentum help me shoot backwards through the dip, but all that happened was that I got my rear wheel about 4-6 inches past before it rolled forward again into the dip. And now my feet didn't touch the ground again!
After what seemed like a VERY LOONG time, almost 10 minutes and with more and more people gathering to watch in amusement at the motorcylist stuck in a dip almost like a turtle turned onto its back, I managed to back the bike out of the depression. I was helped by the fact that I'm over 200 lbs. with a 34" inseam and the stock (not tall) OEM seat, so after repeating the go-forward, roll-backwards routine a few times, I caught the top of the momentum arc so that I could catch the pavement with my toe tips and kick myself further backwards ever so slightly. To accomodate the angle I'd pulled in at, I had to kick and shift my weight on the bike on alternate sides (first the left, then right side) while jerking my torso backwards at the same time to throw my weight into the backwards motion.
I got some sarcastic applause when I finally got out. Meanwhile some guy in a car had been waiting for almost half the time to take my spot, and when I paused to catch my breath after all that exertion, he honked for me to hurry up and get out of the way so he could park there!
Now THAT'S embarrassing!
