Yesterday I was awakened from what felt like a lifetime of sleep, rolled onto a stretcher thing, given a neck brace, then brought up into an ambulance. I don't know what happened and I only know where abouts it happened because they told me, but apparently I crashed and was just laying unconscious there. My bike is all good except the wheels need to be straightened, the fenders unbent, and the handlebar tape on both sides has been ripped. My new raincoat is wrecked, so is the hoody I had on underneath, and my sunglasses are still somewhere out there in little pieces I'm sure. My helmet has a nice wide dent and a crack on the side. It'd probably take a large rock smashed down onto a helmet to do that... Now imagine if that was my skull. Luckily my helmet took the impact, and all I've got is a swollen and scraped up face, bruised and cut up shoulder, cut up knees, and some cuts on my hands (even though I was wearing thick winter gloves). So to anybody too cool to wear a helmet, you're a dumbass. Put a helmet on and tighten up the strap. You may think you're safe, but everybody has an accident at some point, and dude I can't even remember where exactly I was let alone what I did wrong to crash like that. So if you're thinking you don't need a helmet, and that if you're ever about to crash you'll just magically save yourself, well guess what you only learn you had an accident after the fact, and without a helmet you'll probably either not wake up to discover this fact or you'll wake up with a skull full of mush.
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PS: ambulance people rock!