Or you can be really dumb about cooling your brakes.

 A friend with a very very fast corvette was running the Virginia City
hillclimb, an uphill time trial for sporty cars on a very twisty road and
when he finished his brakes were smoking as he pulled in to his pit area.
He grabbed his compressed air nozzle and proceeded to make them burst into
flames by 'fanning the fire' with compressed air....Luckily there were
plenty of fire extinguishers around and we got him put out before too much
damage was done....

  During the worst  Northwest US winter months we stay near a substantial
hill in the southwest, one that I often ride up and down on my pedal
bike.   3700' of 8% grade in 10 miles with lots of very sharp switchbacks,
etc...and it is on the way to an off road vehicle use area.    Lots of
motorheads are trying to rush out of Greater LA on weekends, often in large
RVs with big toy haulers behind.....I get to see and smell lots of burning
brakes and see some pretty dumb driving...Most of them go around this steep
pass,  via a less steep route, but some get 'lost' and end up on the
Grade...where they really should not be, given their driving skills...There
are incidents.....

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Scott Daniel <scottdaniel@turbovans.com>wrote:

> I hope everyone recognizes it's better to cool brakes by driving and not
> using them, then to just stop with very hot brakes.
>
>
>
> On 9/13/2013 8:29 PM, Dave Mcneely wrote:
>
>> ---- Mike Miller <mwmiller6@ATT.NET> wrote:
>>
>>> I certainly didn't do it on purpose. In both cases when it happened I
>>> just didn't think it would, but there was never a place to get off the
>>> brakes and let them cool. Constant downgrade and suddenly overheated!
>>>
>> What gear were you in?  Was there a place to stop?  Maybe not, on some
>> mountain roads there is no place to pull over.  But in a low gear one is
>> usually able to keep the speed down enough to rest the brakes sometimes.
>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 13, 2013, at 3:54 PM, <mcneely4@cox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>  ---- Mike Miller <mwmiller6@ATT.NET> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Haven't had to gear down yet, but I haven't gone over those two roads
>>>>> again either
>>>>>
>>>> I don't have to be on brutally downhill roads to gear down and avoid
>>>> excessive braking.  I have never overheated brakes, and I don't intend to.
>>>>  mcneely
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________**__
>>>>
>>> --
>> David McNeely
>>
>>