Stupid Mistakes

On Saturday, I headed out for a short ride. My plan-30 miles or so with some hills, nothing epic. As I headed out, I told my wife I'd be back between 4:30-4:45.

Everything was going well. It was a nice day and I felt pretty good. I was climbing well. The bike felt great and it was just a good time to be out and on a bike. Just one problem. I was running late.

I wasn't running tons late, but my wife sometimes panics a little. I'm usually pretty spot on when I give here my return times so when it got closer to 5:00, she got a little concerned and gave my cell phone a call.

I was less than 2 miles from the house when I heard the phone ring so I got out my phone, but I missed her call. I attempted to call her back, but while fumbling with my phone, I managed to take one of my hands off the handlebars.

It's unclear to me what exactly happened next, but I managed to get my handlebars turned toward the left and because I had my right hand off the bars, I was unable to correct and I went down....hard.

This is what happened to my helmet:

The arrows point to damage. I'm not sure whether you can see all the damage the way you could if you were holding the helmet, but I cracked the out shell and tore up some of it. I also had multiple cracks in the foam inside the helmet, some of them quite wide.

As I fell, I came down hard on my back and whipped my head back toward the ground, smacking the back of my head against the ground fairly hard-hard enough to do this much damage to my helmet. It's now 4 days later and my neck is still stiff and sore and I had a low level headache for a few days, but no real ill effects from the crash.

At the time of the crash, I was going less than 10mph and I was on a quiet road with no real obstacles. I know a lot of people who will say that I was incredibly stupid for getting out my phone while riding, and that is true. Can't argue with that.

Still, that doesn't mean that this can't happen to other people. Suppose I was reaching for a water bottle and had one hand off the bars and hit a rock which deflected the wheel off to the left. I still wouldn't have been able to correct it and I still would have gone down just as hard. Or how about unexpectedly hitting some gravel or sand in a downhill corner. Or clipping out of your pedal too late at a traffic light. All normal things that could lead to falling off your bike. Things happen.

The point I'm trying to make is this. So many people argue that helmets aren't going to help you much in an accident. For these people, they think of an accident as you getting run down by a vehicle. Fortunately, most "accidents" on a bike don't involve large vehicles, but unfortunately, they often take us by surprise and we don't always have time to protect our heads from injury.

Going down while riding your bike is never planned and often occurs at a time when you least expect it. Your helmet gives you some protection against a blow to the head in such an instance. On Saturday, my stupid mistake could have cost me more than a little bit of pride. I don't really want to get into a helmet debate or a debate on the use of cell phones while riding. I just wanted to point out that something silly could lead to a catastrophic event. And sometimes, a bit of foam and plastic could have prevented it.