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cycling

In praise of bike helmets

Updated with higher quality images at the bottom. — Kenny.

Get up.

Get up, Kenny.

Get up now.

As my mind clears I find myself sprawled on the asphalt. Not lying. Not sitting. My bike was a few feet away. Getting up was hard.

There’s shade over there. Shade is a good idea. I can check everything out in the shade. I can’t put much weight on my left arm.

My ride is over. I know that before I reached the shade. I can feel my shoulder swelling.

A moment ago I’d been 29 miles into a 45-mile ride. I was riding along at an easy 18 miles per hour. There was a loud bang, a violent jolt and everything went white. I could hear my helmet disintegrating. The foam and plastic and rubber were ground up by the road.

The flimsy plastic top, the aesthetic cover of the helmet, popped off. It is upside down, coming to rest close to the chunk of wood that I hadn’t seen in the road. I bounced and slid maybe 20-25 feet.

I have to call someone. I can’t fish out my phone from the back pocket of my jersey because my arm doesn’t want to cooperate. When I finally reach it I’m relieved to see my phone still works. I get my wife’s voicemail.

“Call me back, please.” Details aren’t especially important in a voicemail. Over the next four minutes I slowly get my things organized for the walk out. My wife calls.

“I need you to come pick me up. I’m at the state park we were in, but I have to walk my bike out.”

I’m sore, but in no immediate danger. It is hot, but I have water. I looked at the odometer. There were 27 miles on it when I entered the park; there are 29 miles on it now. I have to walk two miles. Everything is fine.

I test my cognition and recall — years, presidents, names, tree species. I’m fine. I’m lucky.

She soon calls me from the park entrance and wants to know where I am. But I’m not worthy of a good conversation. I’m hurting and mad at myself.

“I am walking” I say a little too forcefully, “my bike out.”

Soon it starts to rain, a cooling insult to a painful injury. A few minutes later I see The Yankee under an umbrella. I’m walking with my hand pinned to my waist.

I admitted I was hurt by saying “You’re going to have to put my bike on the rack. I can’t use my arm. I think we’re going to have to find a doctor.”

Back at the condo I can’t raise my hand above my head. I get cut out of my cycling jersey. I wipe off two hours of sweat. We clean up the road rash on my shoulder, arm, hip and knee.

I suggest we carry my helmet in case a doctor wants to see it. I can’t get that grinding sound out of my ears, but I had not looked at it.

In the hospital waiting room we took this picture of the back of my helmet:

Always wear a helmet, kids. Always.

Tomorrow: the medical tale.

UPDATE: Two weeks later, I decided to take some higher quality pictures.

This is the back of the helmet, as seen from above. So you’d be wearing this and facing the top of the frame. Note the chunk that the road just sheared off. Part of that is resting beside the helmet:

Again the back, this time from straight on. See how the upper left and center of the back was ground away? Note the small cracking at the base of the helmet’s back as well. See that crack on the left side? We’ll get to that next:

Here’s that left-side damage. Hardly a hairline crack:

This is a little farther up the side, but still on the left. As you’re wearing the helmet this crack would be directly over the left ear. The fracturing only stops at the air vent. Who knows how far it could have gone beyond that in a solid form, like a skull. From these pictures we can surmise that, without the helmet, the crown of my head over to my ear would have been heavily damaged:

Finally, looking up into the helmet. That’s one-piece, molded crash foam. Look how much it separated:

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8
Jul 12

Life’s a beach

Another lovely day on the Gulf Coast. Here are just a few pictures to document things. Mr. Brown is pulling in a crevalle jack with his brother:

We bought our wedding rings from Mr. Brown. He’s a terrific man and has a great family. And I’m not just saying that because he’s letting us visit his condo, either.

We took a trip off the condo’s private pier and drove down the street to the state pier. It is very long, almost three-tenths of a mile, and costs $2 to walk. It is not unlike walking through a county fair held in the parking lot of a Walmart sale next door to an Alabama football game. Interesting people watching and too many hooks flying through the air.

The pelicans hang out for any left overs:

Kids were reeling in bait fish to give to the pelicans, so that was fun:

I startled him off so everyone else could take in-flight pictures. I was just a tiny bit hasty with this one:

Not bad for phone pics, though.

Since we rode 60 miles yesterday and that was too far and too hot for my lovely bride, I suggested we take her ideas for future rides and reduce them by about 30 percent. So, today, we just biked into another state.

Don’t tell anyone, but we are staying just four miles from the line, so it isn’t the most impressive feat you could imagine. Hence my expression, I guess. (Incidentally, a friend of ours got engaged just a few hundred yards from this sign a couple of years ago.) We pedaled on into Florida for a while and then turned back for the condo before we made it to the Atlantic ocean. People in Florida are about as observant of bikes as people anywhere else, but the accents might be a bit thicker.

I hit another round number on the odometer today. This is where I should have been to start June. Still behind, still catching up.

That’a 1,500 miles so far this year. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

We had dinner tonight at a place called Cosmos. Jot that down and go there on your next visit. You might have a wait, but once you get beyond the it-is-fashionable-to-wait-despite-half-a-dozen-available-tables insult the food is worth it.

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7
Jul 12

We took a long ride along the coast

It was going to happen at some point this weekend. The land is flat and we brought our bikes. There are long stretches of road and we’re on the right side of the bay. I had this feeling of certainty: The sky is blue, the water is blue-green and I’m riding to Fort Morgan.

My mother used to play here when she was on vacations as a child. She took me there once or twice when I was a teenager. We’re only 30 miles away.

So we were looking at routes last night and The Yankee says, “Let’s ride to this Fort Morgan place.”

It seemed a bit long for her, but she suggested it, so we went.

We had a slight headwind as we headed west. We did a quick turn off the main road on the coast, up to a state park. We did six miles through woods on a bike path, sliding past lagoons and katydids and then two or three more miles of RVs decked out in Alabama and LSU regalia.

And then we joined the cars again, more woods, beaches, beach houses. Head winds. A beautiful, warm summer day. It would make sense that we’d get the tailwind on the way back. We even passed this street:

But the air was dead still on our return trip. This ride, The Yankee said, was a better idea last night when she was in the air conditioning. But it was a great ride. We stopped at a marina and topped off our drinks. I tried new cycling snacks of gels and crackers and things.

We just missed a coastal rainfall, the kind you can set your clock by each afternoon. We did not miss the post-rain humidity, though. Essentially this route took us across the entire width of Baldwin County. It was sunny and the heat index barely made the mid-90s. I love to ride like this. We had plenty of wonderful views:

Here are my seat stays and seat tube, after a flat, steady 60-mile ride:

The dirtier it gets, the better it looks. Just wish I’d been pedaling harder.

We had lunch, cleaned up and then went fishing with our hosts. We caught nothing.

That’s not true. We became very proficient at catching bait fish. Other fish would then eat the eyeballs of those fish. Eyeball-less bait is unattractive to what we were after, so we’d have to catch more bait. And this cycle repeated itself for hours. Fish eyeballs, it seems, are a delicacy in the Gulf this season.

As the sun went down we got cleaned up again and headed out for dinner at the famous Wintzell’s Oyster House.

Tomorrow, she tells me, we’re taking a much shorter ride.

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5
Jul 12

Klink, thunk, ping

I’ve learned a few things today. Valuable, important things.

None more important than this: riding your bike through a hail storm can be painful and hysterical. A big chunk of ice cut my right thumb, right in that crinkly part of the joint. I could hear the hail pinging off my top tube and grinding away under my tires.

This was on an abbreviated ride this afternoon. There were things to do and there were storms. Don’t judge. This was one of those days that featured a storm that defied conventional forecasting and radar. I headed north, saw the clouds gathering and heard the foreshadowing of far off thunder. So I turned south, calculating my time and distance and trying to figure out just how much I could get in for the day.

At just 16 miles it was time to go home, so I made the big turn and noticed the soaked clouds had followed me. Now I’m gliding under them despite all of my previous twists and turns. Big drops start to fall, but this is nice because it cools me down. For the first time ever, I’d managed to forget my phone, so I can enjoy the rain without worrying about ruining electronics.

Before long this turns into movie rain. There was sideways rain and stinging rain and even some that came up from the ground. I’m riding through puddles that reach my feet in the pedals. The temperature drops by what feels like 20 degrees. I’m counting lightning and thunder reports like lifeguards. I’m this close to finding someone’s porch to hide under.

That’s when the hail started. At first they were tiny little bits that were so unremarkable you wouldn’t notice. Is that … hail? Now I’m riding with wet socks and watching ice bounce off the asphalt. I hear it striking my bike, trying to notice the difference between an aluminum and a carbon fiber impact.

The hail is getting larger. Marble sized, in fact. I find myself in a weird position of needing to get home, but dreading going any harder because hail hurts. Now I can hear it thunking and plunking off the shell of my helmet. I’m in the neighborhood, but riding faster means more hail, somehow. I put my hands right over the stem and hope my back is up to the challenge. I’ve got a half mile to go.

A minivan pulls up and offers to give me a lift. “It is getting nasty out,” the stranger says.

Yes, it is. But I’m almost home. The nice thing about riding in the rain is that wet socks make my feet heavier, and that means the pedals turn faster. I don’t even remember the last hill onto our road. I think I top it better than ever before, but the hail still looks like it is growing when I make it to the porch. I’m drenched, laughing and cold. I open the door and ask my lovely bride to bring me a towel. But there is no towel to be had. She is not home.

She’s out looking for me because there’s a bad storm coming, apparently, and I didn’t have my phone for the first time ever. She tells me I’m in trouble. We laugh about this while I dry my bike. Riding in the rain is great. Riding in the hail might mean something entirely different.

Other things I learned on this ride:

Honey Stinger’s packaging keeps their product dry even in a blinding rainstorm. I had one in my pocket for the drenching and figured I should try and eat it as I got cleaned up. If I’m soggy, I figured, I wouldn’t feel too bad about eating something that was also full of rain water. But the waffle held up, and that’s comforting.

Putting balled up pieces of paper in your shoes dries them out.

Your standard cycling kit, which is designed to wick away moisture as you ride, can get so wet in the rain that it takes hours to dry. It takes only about 20 minutes when you pull it out of the washer, though. There was a lot of rain.

Turns out trees were downed. The high school nearby had a fence ripped up in the wind. In one of those weird dynamics of storms I didn’t get any of the wind.

We drove through another small storm cell this evening to have dinner in Prattville. Picked up Brian, who’s going on a beach trip with us this weekend. We had barbecue at Jim ‘N’ Nicks. Haven’t been to one in ages. Miss the place. We more than made up for it in peppermints, though.

And since we are traveling tomorrow, I must pack tonight. So here are some links to bide your time.

More than 1,000 shots recorded by Birmingham’s ShotSpotter during July 4th holiday. I find this difficult to believe, somehow. Bullets are expensive, after all.

Federal judge: Websites must comply with Americans With Disabilities Act. This will be huge.

Forget politics, here are 10 things that really divide Americans. Number one is “Dogs.” You can stop reading after that. And probably ignore everything else the site ever publishes on anything. They didn’t even include the Continental Divide.

5 things the public wouldn’t know without FOIA. FOIA is your friend.

Smartphones hardly used for calls. Great chart to ponder there. Jeff Jarvis writes:

Mobile = local = around me now. Mobile is my personal bubble. It is enhanced convenience, putting the device and the world in my hand. But next imagine no device: Cue the war between Siri and Google Glass to eliminate the last mediator, the thing.

I see companies assuming that mobile requires maps and geography or apps and closed worlds. But I think what we now mistakenly call mobile will instead be about getting each of us to what we want with fewer barriers and less effort because the service has gathered so many signals about us: who we are, where we are, what we like, whom we know, what we know, what we want to know, what we buy…. The power of what we now call mobile, I believe, is in signal generation and the extreme targeting and convenience that enables.

What we call “mobile” is disruptive in ways we can’t yet figure out. We call it “mobile” but we should call it “what’s next.”

Finally, News Cat gifs.

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4
Jul 12

Independence Day

We let freedom ring on the bikes this morning. Snuck in a quick 30 miles (legs felt great) and made it home precisely at noon, which was conveniently when the sun remembered it was being sponsored by the month of July. Had watermelon for lunch.

We drove to Montgomery for ribs at Dreamland, as is our tradition. Our waiter was an immigrant who talked fast and moved a little slower. We sat outside in the shade, shooed away flies and enjoyed barbecue and banana pudding. We heard country songs next to blues next to Texas blues next to Edgar Winter. I’m no longer sure how to categorize Winter, so let’s make him his own genre. The Founders would have wanted it that way.

We made it back home in time to make it to the high school football stadium for the local fireworks show. Found a spot on the shoulder of the road that fit the car perfectly. We pulled the lawn chairs out of the trunk, where they’ve rested since the fireworks last night and craned our necks into the night, enjoying a peaceful half an hour before the first sparks were flung into the sky.

Here’s tonight’s finale:

The conclusion seemed a bit sudden, in a way, but then a firetruck which had been parked near the launch site suddenly bolted for some emergency somewhere. And it has been very, very dry here, despite a bit of rain yesterday, so we found ourselves hoping there wasn’t a problem with the pyro. I don’t think you could pay enough to cover the antacids for the fireworks engineers. Always a crowd, always in a drought, no thanks.

But the show was great. Kids were playing. Little boys and girls oohed and aahed. The weather was divinely perfect. Everything was.

Hope yours was great as well.

Happy Independence Day!