Wear Your Bicycle Helmet, Stupid.

I've been seeing some guy riding around the roads of West Chester, PA, and this jerk is consistently not wearing a helmet. You know the type, the wannabe euro-racer type. The guy who thinks, "Hey, if I don't wear a helmet, I'll probably be as good of a rider as Marco Pantani circa 1998!"

Marco Pantini leading the climb, sans helmet

Here's a quick, free tip: Wear a helmet. I realize it might be tough to remember. So if you get to your next ride and you think to yourself, "Did frey say to wear a helmet or to not wear a helmet?" here is a graphic to help jog your memory:


In all seriousness, just wear your damn helmet. You don't look cool without the helmet, and you look even less cool when you crash and you're hemmorhaging on the side of the road. Finally, if your so bent on looking like a euro-racer, realize that you can't even ride in a UCI-certified race or a USA Triathlon certified race without a helmet.

If you need a reminder of how badly you can get hurt while cycling, check out this crash in yesterday's Tour de Suisse:

Can you imagine how dead Mark Cavendish would have been if he wasn't wearing a helmet? He would have been very dead. Check out the slow-motion replay of the crash at about 55 seconds into the video and you can see everyones' helmet-clad heads bouncing off the pavement.