Helmet Testing

I convinced 5 of my co-workers to join me on a 30 mile river ride on Sunday. 2 of my co-workers are runners, but they have never ridden a bike for that long of a distance. They also never ridden road bikes. I loaned my Giant TCR and my wife’s OCR3 for two of my female co-workers to ride. I also brought extra helmets for them to wear. At first, they were a little reluctant about wearing the helmets. “I look Goofy”, “Its gonna mess up my hair” were some of the comments. We convinced them to wear the helmets and off we went.

As we were riding along the trail, the girl riding my TCR lost control of the bike and down she went. Unfortunately, I was riding close to her and I plowed onto my TCR sending me flying over the bars. She suffered a couple of minor cuts from her sunglasses on her eyebrow area, but the helmet took the brunt of the impact. She was really worried about the bikes, but I was really worried about her. After a few minutes, she bravely stood up and said ‘Let’s keep on going’. As for my endo, well, I guess my ‘Mountain Bike’ skills kicked in and I did the ‘dive and roll’ maneuver. However, my head did hit the pavement, but my helmet took the hit for me. See the picture below (the visor snapped off, I snapped it back in).

Needless to say, both ladies were glad that they wore the helmets.

So is the bike OK? My TCR did suffer some cosmetic damage:

The brake hoods got scraped, no big deal.

Here are the lessons learned: Always wear a helmet and never lend a first time rider ride a race bike. Like she put it, “It’s like giving a person who just got their driver’s license a Ferrari”

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