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Forgot Helmet

01.08.2013 by Ray Niekamp // 9 Comments

Some of you might have noticed on my Twitter feed that I had a little issue on Sunday morning’s club ride. One of our A riders is recovering from a bout of sickness contracted during the middle of last week, and so posted a B-level ride on the club’s Yahoo group. The added benefit was that her ride would leave about an hour after the regular club ride, which was welcome, since the temperature was expected to be on the borderline too-cold-to-ride point.

Sure enough, when I got up to let the dog out it was only 33 degrees (1C). Luckily, it was only 6 a.m., and I had three hours to wait for some warming to set in. I had a leisurely and filling breakfast, read the paper, and then got ready to face the chill.

I was counting on it to warm up during the ride, but figured I’d still need to dress more warmly than I usually do. I added a sleeveless base layer under the t-shirt I normally wear. On my feet, I put a pair of polypropylene liner socks on under my woolies. I pulled my headband/earwarmer down around my ears, and a Headsweats doo-rag over that. Then, I got into my windbreaker and made sure I had the needed cell phone and credit card with me.

It looked like the bike wouldn’t need much in the way of prep. I’d lubed the chain the previous afternoon — when it was still warm — and only had to pump three times to bring the rear tire up to snuff. I clipped in my water bottles, started my computer, and I was off.

Yeah, it was cold. But there was a saving grace — no wind. I pedaled easily to the Starbucks where our rides start, turned into the parking lot, and rode across it to the group of cyclists that was already gathered there.

Almost in unison, a shout went up. “Your helmet, Ray!!!” I stopped, looked, and then felt my head. Oh, jeez! After all that prep time (and not even my wife to kid about it this time), I had left the house without wearing a helmet. I know it’s happened before, but always to other cyclists. Not me.

“Look,” I told the group. “I’m only a mile away. I’ll go back and get the helmet.”

“We’ll meet you up there,” said Jordan, waving his hand vaguely up the street I’d be on. I nodded, and set off.

Once I got my helmet, I figured it would be easiest to take a shortcut and try to intercept the peloton at a major intersection in the opposite direction from my house as Starbucks. It occurred to me that I wasn’t really clear what Jordan meant by “up there.” I got to the intersection, was held up by a red light, and saw no one. Hmmph, I thought. They’ve come through here already.

I turned, and headed up the bike lane along the suburban four-lane that feeds traffic into our neighborhood. Up at the t-intersection where the Walgreens is, I could still see no one. I continued on, setting out on the route I knew the group would be taking that morning.

About a mile and half farther, my cell phone rang. It was Debra.

“Where are you, Ray?” she asked.

“Approaching the parkway,” I answered.

“Oh, good grief. We’re back at the Walgreens. Janice had a flat.”

“I’ll wait for you at the turn before the parkway,” I said.

I leaned the bike up against a light pole, and waited. The day was still chilly, but the sun felt good where it hit my jacket. But only on that corner where it hit. I turned every few minutes to position a different part of myself toward the sun.

After a 15-20 minute wait, I saw them, coming up the hill toward me. It turns out they waited for me at Starbucks, and when I didn’t come back for the start of the ride, they set out. By then, I was already two miles ahead of them. “What we should have done, was ride with Ray back to his house and then start the ride from there,” said one exasperated biker.

Yeah, that would have worked. And so would remembering my helmet in the first place.

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // cold, helmets, senior moment

Getting My Gear Together

06.14.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount deals with an issue that affects many of us from time to time…

I usually keep my biking gear in the same places.

Bike in garage.

Seasonal clothes in a closet and out of season items in a storage bench.

Helmet and a few other items such as my Garmin, spare tube and C02 cartridge, plastic bag for my phone, sunglasses and a pouch with key and money on the shelf of a bookcase in my home office. (I use the space that is available and that my wife does not object to me using.)

Of course this makes riding easy. Either the night before a ride I gather what I need and place them in an easily accessible place, such as my kitchen, or the day of a ride I can get what I need quickly and head out the door.

No rummaging, no searching, all aggravation free.

That is except when my system gets changed.

My mother-in-law was coming to visit for a week and would be staying in the home office, which has a day bed. So I moved my gear and other items out of that room and into my bedroom. It made sense, this way I would not need to go into my office during her stay.

And then the next morning I readied for a ride. Kitted up, prepared the bike and then went looking for the rest of my gear – sunglasses, a pouch with key and money, baggie for phone, baggie with spare tube and C02. And could not find them.

Tick, tick, tick. If I did not get out by a certain time I would miss my morning exercise window. After all, this was a workday and I could not just ride later.

I looked all over the bedroom as I was certain I had placed them in there. My wife looked as well and she could not find them. She even offered to go back into the home office and look to see if I had left them there. But we opted not to do that since her mother was still asleep.

Five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Tick, tick, tick, slam.

The window had closed.

So I put my bike away.

I put away my helmet and gloves.

And I unkitted, if that is a word, and then I glanced beneath my wife’s dresser and saw a box that I had moved there the night before. Atop but toward the back of the box were the things I had been looking for. I thought for sure I had looked there. My wife looked there too. They were about two feet from the bed but you had to get down on your hands and knees to see them there. I looked under the bed, I looked under a bench but I had not gotten down to look on top and toward the back of the box.

Oh well.

Now, all of my riding gear is together in a corner of my bedroom. So the next time I plan to ride, I will be able to gather it all, without rummaging or searching and all aggravation free.

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Categories // Equipment, guest post, Odds 'n ends Tags // clothing, helmets, shoes

“The Bicyclist Was Not Wearing a Helmet”

07.13.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 17 Comments

It’s a little story.

A short item in the police blotter section of the Austin American-Statesman newspaper tells of a collision between an SUV and a bicycle.

After reporting that the northbound cyclist was in the righthand lane, and was hit by the SUV, the reporter included the line, “The bicyclist was not wearing a helmet.”

So what?

That line implies that the cyclist was at fault. But the information about the crash said the SUV was coming from the opposite direction, and turning into a business. So it should have yielded to oncoming traffic, including the cyclist. The item did not point out that the SUV failed to yield to the cyclist. Instead, we learn that the cyclist was not wearing a helmet. There is no mandatory helmet law for adults in the state of Texas or the city of Austin. The information is irrelevant.

What would be relevant is whether the police ticketed the CRV driver for failure to yield. After all, the cyclist had to be taken to a nearby hospital with minor injuries.

This is the kind of little thing that can have negative repercussions. Bike-hating drivers who see the item will shake their heads and cluck their tongues, and mutter about those no-good cyclists.

Why didn’t the paper include a line about the driver being at fault in this case?

“We do not assign blame in straight news stories unless quoting/citing a police report or spokesman,” tweeted the Statesman’s social media editor, in reply to an outraged cyclist’s inquiry.

The Bike Noob worked in the news media for 16 years before becoming a journalism professor. I can explain a little about how this sort of thing happens, although I don’t defend it.

Newsrooms, like all organizations, operate on a set of routines. Collecting items from the police blotter is a matter of routine, handled by one of several reporters assigned to the police beat. Most blotter stories are short, because by newsroom standards, they don’t affect many people. That’s the situation here.

Once the reporter gets the information from the police, she writes it up, and moves on to the next story. Since only minor injuries were involved, it isn’t worth the reporter’s time and effort to get more details from the police. So she misses the chance to dig deeper and find out if the police are blaming the driver for the collision.

But the helmet info was probably included in the incident report filed by the police, so she dutifully made note of that.

I once worked in a TV newsroom with a policy of stating whether a cyclist wore a helmet whenever we reported on a cycling crash. Most of us weren’t cyclists. It seemed reasonable to include that information. We didn’t consider that we were making the cyclist appear to be at fault for not wearing a helmet.

But that’s just what happened here. While the paper did not “assign” blame to the cyclist, by reporting that she wasn’t wearing a helmet, and not reporting any action against the motorist, only the cyclist was put in a bad light.

What will it take to correct this prevailing attitude? Keep calling it to the attention of editors. Things aren’t really going to change, though, until more reporters and editors join the ranks of cyclists, and are alert to implications that such a seemingly innocuous line could have.

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Categories // Safety Tags // helmets, news media

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