I Need A Helmet

I’ve spent some time wearing helmets in my life. When I got my first motorcycle, much to the dismay of both of my parents, one promise I made them was that I would never ride it unless I was wearing a helmet.

I know there are some bikers who frown on helmets and say the only thing they’re good for is to carry your head away in after an accident, but I’ve always been a fan of preserving the few gray cells I have up there as much as I could. So, except for two or three slow speed rides around Elkhart Campground on my last motorcycle, a beautiful Yamaha V Star 1100 Silverado, I never rode a motorcycle without having a helmet on.

As a young soldier, wearing a heavy steel helmet wasn’t always comfortable. In fact, it was never comfortable, especially in some of the hot places where I was. And I’ll admit that I didn’t wear mine anytime I didn’t have to. I figured if somebody was going to shoot me in the head, that helmet it wasn’t going to give me a lot of protection. I rethought that position the first time some shrapnel bounced off of it. As it turns out, a headache beats the heck out of a head wound.

Well, I’m not young or a soldier anymore, and I think my motorcycle riding days are behind me. But as it turns out, I still need a helmet. And no, I’m not riding the short school bus, so stop it. Though, after you read this blog post, you may think I should be riding the short school bus.

When we bought our house it had an electric garage door opener, but we could only operate it from a button inside the garage because there were no remote controls for it. So I went to Lowe’s and bought a couple of universal remote controls to have in our vehicles. When I got home and read the directions, it said to make sure the dip switches on the motor unit were in a certain position, so I needed to check them out.

We didn’t have a stepladder at the time, but I figured if I stood in the bed of my Ford pickup truck I could reach it. So I crawled in the back of the truck and straightened up directly under the motor. That’s when I learned that not only was I high enough to reach it, that damned motor was hard when I smacked my head into it! Hard enough that I almost fell out of the truck bed!

You’d think I would learn something from an experience like that, wouldn’t you? Well, in my case, you’d be wrong. In the back end of our garage we have sort of a loft, which is very handy for storing things. The other day I decided I needed to rearrange some of the items we had stuck in the loft, so I opened up a stepladder and crawled up to do just that. Can you see it coming? I had the ladder positioned so perfectly that as I crawled up it I rammed my head on that big steel support beam you see in the front of the loft. Can you say ouch? I said ouch and a whole bunch of other words that my mother would have washed my mouth out with soap for using.

Again, you’d think that would be enough head bonking for one guy, wouldn’t you? Well, once again, you’d be wrong. The orange thing you see under the kayaks in this picture is a T-bone extension rack that goes in the receiver of our short bed pickup, so we can carry our kayaks in it. It’s very handy, but it also sticks out quite a ways. So when we are not using it I lean it up against the wall in the garage.

The other day I decided to check the tire pressures on our different vehicles and top them off with my air compressor. I was doing real well until I got to my 16 foot Key Largo fishing boat. The tire on the starboard side of the trailer (starboard is right for you landlubbers) was low. In fact, it was down so much that I couldn’t get a reading with my air pressure gauge. But there was air in it. I finally figured out that the valve stem was screwed in so tightly that it wasn’t connecting with the gauge. It also wouldn’t connect with the filler from the air compressor hose. So I got my little handy-dandy valve stem tool and tried to back it off a little bit so it made contact. As it turned out, I backed it off too far and the darned thing shot right out and bounced off the wall behind me. The wall where the kayak rack is. Now, I know you can see this coming, right? I was crawling around on my hands and knees looking for the darned thing when I smacked my head right into that rack! Turns out it’s just as hard as the garage door opener! And the loft!

Yep, I need a helmet. And I also need to stay out of the damn garage unless someone’s there to give me adult supervision!

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Thought For The Day – Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.