High on life, I watched as an article I wrote outperformed any other piece I’d ever written by a lot. It was about wearing helmets, and I wrote it in the hopes it would encourage at least one more person to wear a lid who might not have otherwise. Better yet, I was munching into two burritos and halfway into a 190-mile motorcycle roundtrip.Â
“Could this day get any better?” I thought to myself.
Oh, sweet, beautiful irony.Â
Still buzzing about the fact that this article was reaching so many people and thus had the potential to save more riders, I hit the road—literally.
Some loose gravel, a tire that was overinflated for the heat of the day, and ultimately me were all to blame for my very first lowside on a public road.
This wasn’t one of those “I’m losing it, I’m losing it, it’s gone.” lowsides, it was a “Wow, this is great, I love rid… chsheeeeee.” crashes. And very quickly, I was sliding my way toward a guardrail. Thankfully, my riding jeans saved my booty from any road rash, but the abrasion resistance also meant I was a passenger in this slide, and soon I was going to have to choose how I wanted to hit that rail.
I was completely upright as I slid, and when my legs went under the guardrail, my choices were simple: hit it with your chest, or hit it with your helmet. My summer riding jacket has no chest armor, so I put my head forward, looked to the side, and waited.
Smack.
The impact between my Alpinestars Supertech R10 helmet and the rail stopped me dead in my tracks.
Now, I’ve hit my head quite a few times, while wearing quite a few different helmets, and it has always hurt way more than I thought it was going to.
There’s maybe one exception to that, but it was on dirt with a MIPS helmet, and I was more focused on my inability to breathe and potentially cracked ribs. But this time, I couldn’t believe how little I felt, to the point that I thought maybe something was seriously wrong because my head should feel worse.
As the adrenaline wore off, I did get a little headache and a pain in my cheek, but holy hell, I’m sold on FIM Certification. By the time I’d nursed my bike home and went to the hospital, my head pain had already subsided.
The Supertech R10’s outer shell had a crack, and a part had splintered out. But apart from that, it looked fine. In fact, it looks so fine that I wish I could keep wearing it, as it was my go-to lid for all situations, but you can read more about that when post my full review.
This article is just to give Alpinestars, the Supertech R10, and FIM Certification a huge shoutout and thank you.
Right now, I’m in mourning. I’m sadder about losing this helmet than the damage I also did to my Street Triple in this crash. Ironically, my crash might be the catalyst that encourages one more person to wear a helmet. So if it is, it was worth it.
