This embarassing moment brought to you by Fred K, longtime customer, good guy, part of the racing scene in the way-way-way-wayback days, this time catching me at the Redwood City Criterium in 1975. That’s me at the front right, long hair, beaky nose, thinking about… what exactly? I certainly wasn’t worried about my weight back then (133 pounds at 6′) and my future was, well, I was 18 back then, junior college on the horizon I guess. Wish I could remember the names of these guys. Lots of familiar faces.
Mike, looking at those “brain basket” helmets, I wonder why anyone (me included) ever thought they would protect against injury.
It would be interesting to see evidence showing whether those helmets actually did do anything more than keep our hair in place. I don’t know if we were actually under any illusions at the time that they did much, but we were young and stupid at the time and generally not too worried about mortality. That probably helps to explain why Kevin has no such issues cycling; obviously, when he’s “in formation” flying downhill with the guys (something he does better than I), a seizure would be a very bad thing.And just as obviously, it’s the furthest thing from his mind at that time. So if you or I were new to cycling today, and somebody handed us one of those helmets, even if there were nothing better, I think we’d be likely to question whether they could do any good. Sucks to be getting old sometimes!