Ow! I've had some run-in's with bicycles as well, the worst was with the road. Tons of road rash and a broken wrist. But I've never hit a tree!!! 
Just thought a folding (as opposed to 'folded'!) bicycle might be handy for city living/public transport/etc., but didn't know if they were more trouble than they were worth!
What ever happened to the carriages on the trains where you could wheel your bike in? I haven't seen that for years. Some HSE BS perhaps?
The folded bike. That's a story. We lived in Germany at the time. I stole my sister's bike from the shed minutes after I had been warned severly by my old man not to ever touch that bike again (I was a tinkerer, I used to take the sprocket off and turn it around, same with the wheels, remove seat and you had a weird upside sort of contraption or I would take it apart down to the last ball bearing just 'for something to do' so I guess I could see why my sister used to get PO'd). I was just taking it for a thrill seeker run before supper.
Anyway I went way up the top of this hill. It had a wide dirt tracks for forestry tractors. I was on the bike schlussing down the hill like an Olympic downhill skier on a black slalom course (well I never said I was normal - I used to line kids and jump them Evil Knevil style -pssst Bob you're rambling agin) when out of nowhere the biggest side root from some dumb ass old oak tree just and uprooted its big ass at the exact moment that I performed my well executed flying-schluss-power-slide combo to the right. Well that tree was much bigger, much stronger and much meaner than an a wirey 95 lb boy. It just grabbed that wheel just long enough to allow me to to experience another one of my boyhood fantasies-the exhilerating thrill of being shot from a canon. That thrill ended very abrubtly about a hundredth of a second later. I hit the tree with a glancing blow and was richoted off further down the hill. The bike wasn't so lucky. It scored a direct hit and stopped immediately.
Well I could not move for a few minutes. I saw an old lady at the foot of the hill and shouted for help. She stopped and looked up the hill for a bit and walked on. (Did she know me? or did she walk on cuz she might have to administer first-aid or maybe she was just a blind old bat). I lay there for a long time and was eventually able to get myself up. I knew I had missed supper and I was in big trouble for being late. I was really hurting. I went and picked up the bike, the spocket was at a 90 degree angle, the front wheel looked like something off a clown's bike and the frame was bent about 120 degrees. I was scared now. I was in big trouble, I managed to get to the bottom with the bike and who should I encounter but my sister! OH SH*T! She was really upset and happy at the same time because she knew I was gonna get in big trouble. But as we got closer to the house, she must have realized the pain I was in and took pity on me because she helped me get the bike down into the hidden recesses in the basement. She even helped me with a cover story of why I looked, walked and sounded like I had been hit by a freight train. I did get the bike fixed, somewhat. But boy did I owe her and big time. And she banked those IOU's for later in life../
