Obligatory Rant Post: Helmets

I'm afraid I don't have any real spectacular news to report of late, but I did want to update. For anyone out there that might get some sort of amusement from my sardonic humor, you might do better to wait for another post, because this one is mostly housekeeping, and then a dash of indignation. We'll start with the housekeeping.

I'm pretty much there, on all fronts. That's pretty cool to be able to say. At the moment I have about four hundred dollars left to raise for the trip. I still have a few people that I need to solicit, and I chose the word solicit intentionally, from like Jake and his parents and my Brother and possibly his girlfriend. And I have at least two donations that're heading towards the mail as I write this. That said, with those donations, I'll either be all the way to four thousand dollars or so close that I don't mind dipping into my own wallet to close the deal. So that's pretty cool, although it'd be wicked cooler to be able to say that I was done with fundraising.

I also scheduled a physical for the fourteenth of May, probably the last time I'll see my family physician before he moves his practice out west. I'll miss you Dr. Mugol! The only thing left besides buying a few more necesities is to get crackalacking on my presentation for the trip, which is on government housing. I know next to nothing about them, except that they haven't really worked. Now onto the long part of the post... the angry.

I don't understand why people don't wear helmets. Not only on my college campus, but in the world at large. My cyclist roommate doesn't even wear his helmet unless he's out on the road. A lot of girls tell me that they don't want to ruin their hair. I get the feeling that people feel... ehh, dorky, unfashionable, etc. wearing helmets. Well, I can tell you, there's nothing uglier than a head split open on the pavement. I've seen it. For me the trade-off isn't worth it.

I started really thinking about this whole issue when I went on a ride with Jamie out onto 33, and she had no helmet on. We were going like thirty miles an hour down a hill. I'm no physicist, but I get the feeling that your skull would break if it hit concrete at that speed. She told me later that she doesn't wear a helmet because that way I won't ride too far ahead of her when we go on rides. It's true, I don't. Because I don't want to have to call 911 while I'm out on the road. The fact of the matter is, helmet or not, I'll probably have to make that call or have that call made for me at least once if I continue road cycling.

Cycling is inherently dangerous. Most sports are. Then again, most sports don't involve cars. The argument that wearing a helmet still doesn't guarantee you'll survive a wreck is a valid one. There are plenty of other things that can kill you during a bicycle wreck than just head trauma. But it's the exact same thing to say that even if you wear a seatbelt you could still die in an automobile accident. Yet everyone I know wears a seatbelt in the car, but I almost never see a bicyclist wearing a helmet. So where's the disconnect? I'll chance a guess and say that it's because there's a law in Virginia against not wearing a seatbelt. It took me seeing a neighbor hospitalized for spilling his brains out on my pipestem to keep me in a helmet every time I got on a bike.

So, long story short, seeing a cyclist without a helmet on really grinds my gears. Cause you're pretty much asking for brain damage. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

Peace out Hombres!