So something that came to mind last night as I drifted away into my peaceful sleep. I fell yesterday. I fell hard yesterday. I now have a bunch of cuts on my hip and leg and even worse some wicked charlie horse’s which I noticed every time I rolled over. I don’t mention this because I want sympathy. I know the risks. Its simple, if you ride a mountain bike, you will fall at some point. It will happen. No way to get around that. Especially in New England when the leaves cover the trails and they are still wet from the frost. If you think you are technically sound when riding, come up north and try it with some wet leaves. Then we will see how you can handle a bike. Apparently, I’m not as good on a bike as I thought or I wouldn’t be mentioning this.
But it did make me think of a story and I figured I would share that with you all.
About 5 years ago when I worked at a shop, I took a bunch of new riders out for a ride. The one thing people need to know is that bike shops in tourist towns hire high school kids. Not all of them even like riding bikes, they just think working at a bike shop for the summer would be cool. Anyway, these 2 lads wanted to get into biking so off we went. They were too cool to wear a helmet. No matter how much I wanted them to, nope, they didn’t want to. Sure, I probably shouldn’t have taken them with me, but hey, I’m not their dad. So off we went. I took it easy on them and about 1/4 way into the ride, I went down HARD. WAY HARD. I lost large amounts of skin, which I still have plenty of scars from, broke some bike parts, and manged to hit my head. Good thing I was wearing my helmet eh? I stood up, shook it off, checked myself over and saw everything was in decent shape. Then I looked at those 2 kiddies. I never saw anyone so freaked out in my entire life. They didn’t think about how hard and how fast someone could go down. To make a long story short (I know, too late), I got up, finished the ride and we all went back to the shop. They both tried on helmets and bought some that same day.
Moral of my story, was me falling and being in a bit of pain for a while worth having 2 new bikers wear helmets from now on?? You betcha. Remember kids, wear those brain buckets. They can be a bit important..
