I appreciate my helmet. I treat it with respect. I never leave for a ride without it. I replace it after a crash or even after helplessly watching it bound down the stairwell like some kind of deformed styrofoam slinky-dink after allowing it to slip from my grasp. (This activity also typically involves some assertions questioning what it does in its spare time, its origins of birth, and things of that nature.) Community member @chaz also recently suggested that, in accordance with motorcycle tradition, we ceremoniously cut the strap on the helmet and hang it in the VVorkshop in deference to the purpose it served us.
Suffice to say, I’m grateful for the advances technology offers us when it comes to protective headgear, because staying alive is in alignment with my strategy. But progress is the slayer of ritual and tradition, and I can’t help but look back longingly to the days when helmets were rarely worn and if they were, they consisted of thin strips of leather that, assuming it stayed on, would do little more than keep your cranium from coming apart after cracking it to bits on a cobblestone or some such object.
The hairnet was the coolest cranial accouterment ever designed, with the insulated cycling cap that fit over it being a close second. The cycling cap on its own was, of course, also a class piece of kit to be worn forwards, sideways, or backwards – made cooler only by perching a set of cycling-specific shades on top of it. A helmetless head saw hair slicked back by the wind as a byproduct of the V as riders raised their arms in triumph over the finish line. The bare noggin on the high mountain passes was a beacon of Purified Awesome, allowing us to see in all their glory the suffering faces of the riders as they moved sur la plaque over the summit.
Take a moment, fellow Velominati, to honor the Useless Headgear of our past.
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/frank@velominati.com/Headgear/”]
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@rhys
Are those Spinx bars? They seem really neat to me.
@DerHoggz
Just the road bars that came on the AR in the picture mate. Sphinx are quite dear and not for my style of riding, but they are quite good.
@rhys
I'm talking about the bike behind the AR, that is a track bike, no?
this argument that its a choice about the helmet- plain bullshit. All these various risk taking activities without the customary precautions- under the pretense that "no one can prove its safer" is mostly selfish, really. @otoman summed it up- others pick up the pieces. Personally I can speak to the discomfort of trying to put these people back together ( it's like the other type of dad paradigm- first being te awesome quote "if you're not wearing it you don't need it"; second one is "we didn't need any of this crap and everyone was ok(the guy they threw away the mold afterwards...) as they're trying to die. @scaler911 can tell you all about it.
I'm not advocating for new rules or customs etc; just don't say that it's an equivalently responsible choice based on the lack of absolute proof. On the same line of reasoning- the fancy little device that measures oxygen in the blood from beat to beat- no study has proven conclusively a survival benefit after millions of patients. But no one- stupid, cavalier, curmudgeon or profoundly stubborn old school would dare do surgery without.
At some point society will either remove the option of the activity or refuse to fix(pay, really) for the result of failure to take reasonable precaution. Then it will be a real choice.
Oh dear I thought it had stopped... getting rid of Mormons was never this hard.
@ChrisO
It was largely about hairnets till you lobbed your post in. Pull your head in, it sounds like you've had this coversation before and THIS IS NOT THE PLACE to make your point.
@DerHoggz
Yeah it is. The bars on the track bike (Tk2) are the road bars that originally came on the AR that is also in the picture. Sorry, should have been more clear in my previous statement.
@ChrisO
We may disagree but that's pretty damn funny. I've moved on, my rant was enough for me.
An acceptable post about helmets:
I was wearing a helmet today while on a four lane street with a median. Two gauchos were riding down the median on their horses. We proceeded to have an impromptu sprint.
I dropped them.
@Minion
You know what you can do with your head Minion... except it will never fit up there with a helmet on.