I didn't keep any of the evidence. It didn't occur to me in 1978 that I might need to carry the helmet and documentation around for 35 years and many moves to establish credibility on the internet. I did (as best as my memory and experience recall) spend 5 days in a coma in IC at Mass General Hospital, was CAT scanned twice, found to have clots in my hypothalamus and bruising on the base of my spinal cord; the cause of my right side seizures and subsequent lose of all right side motor skills with the first scan, then all clear the second. I did not have any injury around my right front skull where my helmet foam was crushed to half thickness. (This was the Mk 1 Bell Biker with its near indestructible soft plastic shell and very firm foam.) I walked (quite unsteadily) out of that hospital after a three week stay. 4 month later, I had my appetite back. (The hypothalamus.) I relearned most of the motor skills. (Still cannot ice skate, one of my joys.)

The broken fork stayed at the bike shop owned by the guy I was going to ride with that fateful day. I don't know where the helmet ended up. I suppose my CAT scans are somewhere. I never saw them. My mom was horrified that I brought these beautiful felt lined leather straps with brass buckles home and quickly tossed them. They were used to hold my wrists to the bedside while I was in seizure. I had no memory of them or any other part of my week in IC. I had never seen the IC before when I walked in during a follow up visit to the neurosurgeon (and apparently I was such a mess then that my IC charge nurse didn't recognize me when I knocked on the IC door!). Word of my injury apparently spread like wildfire and Boston became one of Bell's leading markets. (That 's my conjecture but I had fun for years walking into bike shops I had never been in before, hanging out at the new helmet displays and having the salesmen tell me about my accident!)

Oh, my riding companion at the time was an aid in a neurosurgical emergency unit. I suspect he had some idea of what he was looking at and he would have been the source for the information getting out to the bike world.

One of my few memories of my hospital stay was of walking my corridor and into rooms of folk who were not going to recover from their head injuries. I had no idea what had happened to me, but I sure didn't want to be one of them!

The crash happened when I hopped a ditch at a construction site. It was repaved but the new pavement was an inch lower so I always hopped it. My regular training ride. That day, my Lambert fork decided it had lived its life and wasn't there when I landed. I was going probably 35 at the time. (The next year, nothing had changed and I hopped that ditch another several hundred times but on forks I trusted.) There was no evidence I ever got my hands off the bars or attempted any roll and lots that this took me completely by surprise.

So when folk tell me that my helmet might/might not have saved my life, I tend to be a little sensitive. And no, I didn't attempt to address all the other "my helmet saved my life" claims. None of my business. But if someone tells me to my face "maybe", they will hear from me.

Ben