Why I wear a helmet
I wear a helmet for a number of reasons such as:
-- to protect my head from falling rocks in the avalanche areas I ride through a time or two each year (yes, I've had rocks fall all around me)
-- to protect my head from the birds that like to dive-bomb me. Their beaks can be pretty sharp.
-- to protect my head from falling acorns. When I lived in Winnipeg, this was an issue because of the quantity of oak trees in that city.
But about a week ago, I encountered the main reason I wear a helmet .... to save my life.
I crashed at the bottom of a very steep and slippery hill on a 200K brevet. My first contact point was my left hip (which is a rainbow hue of many colors and incredibly painful right now), but milliseconds after I landed on my hip, the thought that flashed through my brain was, "My head is going too fast!!". I tensed, but it all happened so fast. There was a very loud CRACK, and everything went white and sparkly. I tried to focus ... I started to raise my head ... but everything was still white and sparkly, and I laid my head down again. A few minutes later I was able to sit up, but I had to be assisted off the road.
While I was sitting in the van of one of the people who helped me off the road, trying to control my nausea and dizziness, he told me to check my helmet. He must have had some association with the cycling world, or I'm not sure he would have thought of it. I checked ...... and my helmet is cracked through.
My helmet cracked .... my skull did not.
I finished the ride on adrenalin ... and tried another brevet a couple days later, but discovered that I'm too injured right now for anything like that. I'll be visiting a sports Dr soon (I hope) to have a few of the more serious injuries looked at. But I am SO GLAD I was wearing that helmet.
The crack isn't much to look at, but the helmet is cracked right through.
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