Wear a helmet

Riding has been sporadic these past weeks, due mostly to an overly ambitious travel schedule and massive, towering, spectacular work-related deadlines. Which is fine. Easing in and out of fitness has felt healthier than periods of obsessive training in the past. Or at least, that's how I'm justifying it to myself.

So out in Sausalito this weekend under clear blue skies, hitting the small hill before oldtown. There were hundreds out on their bikes, and I was passing a group of about a dozen when I heard this terrible noise behind me. It was unmistakably bad, a crack and scraping of metal and then screeching car tires. I looked back and saw a cyclist face down in the middle of the lane about 10 yards back, and a cars spun sideways just behind. Damn.

I raced back as people were getting out of their cars and other cyclist were stopping. It was a guy in his early twenties, no helmet, not moving at all, and bleeding a lot. Everyone cellphoned and we crouched around him not wanting to move him, until suddenly he jerked and moaned and tried to get up. We held him down and tried to reassure him until the sirens in the distance got louder and louder. Then there was a flurry of professional activity and interviews and then they were all gone.

Apparently the kid was out of the saddle working hard up the hill when his bars just slipped out of his hands and in an instant he was over them and in the street. He couldn't have been doing more than 12mph, but as I've often been told, it's usually not the speed but the height that causes head injuries.

I have a helmet split in two down the middle hanging above where I park my bike at home. It reminds me how confident I had been just before I went over the bars 5 years ago.

Wear your helmets, friends.