California High

In dedication to my lifetime mentor in all the creative arts - my mother – I am posting an excerpt from her book, “California High”, which I believe captures the true essence of motorcycle adventure. 

After hearing my brother tell hilarious stories about riding to California and planting his wild roots in what would soon be his most beloved city, my mother decided to interview him and put it all down in a book.  It turned into not only a very intriguing snippet of late 70’s, early 80’s San Francisco culture, but also a wonderful depiction of my brother’s unique character, even at this young and hopeful age.  The story of such tenacity and courage in the face of ongoing hardship justifies the successful and happy man he is today.

Someone famous and long dead said, “Adventure is merely inconvenience rightly considered.”

And from my brother Tony, alive and well:  “Stories happen to those who can tell them.”

The year was 1983.  By then Tony had been in San Francisco three or four years.  It was my first visit to that city, and I decided to look him up.  We sat at a small kitchen table drinking coffee, and I asked him to tell me a little about his trip out here….

                                    ….. and he told this story:

1979.

“Well, I had $200 dollars. I had twenty extra dollars from somewhere. It was before dawn, a very crisp and very cold September morning, and I remember it was just so fresh outside – such a fresh, new beginning. It’s like the whole trip, things, just every day things, meant so much; they were so symbolic. Like when I finally got to San Francisco and smashed into the rear end of a car and broke my motorcycle fairing to bits, it was like smashing through to the finish, because now, without a fairing, there is no return – you can’t go back without a fairing.  I was there to stay, and I didn’t have any money to buy another fairing, and Michigan was a long way away, and I was there, and there was no going back. 

‘But when I left, it was a very fresh morning, and Beca said, “Goodbye, I love you. Have a good adventure.”  And David, her husband said, “Shut the door!”  I hopped on the bike and ‘this is it’, you know, the Big Countdown. Made sure everything was tied down right.  Well, of course, first thing that happens is everything starts falling off the bike.’

He went out and came back with a raggedy box full of snapshots. 

‘I think I’ve got a picture in here somewhere. Here it is.  You see here where the rope goes under the edge of the fender?  Just before I got to Chicago, all of a sudden I felt everything go ‘Whoop!’  I stopped and pulled over and kicked everything out of the middle of the road as quickly as I could, and as I was trying to put everything back on the bike, I noticed my tennis shoes were gone somewhere along 94-West, and I also noticed my legs were full of pickers, and do you know, I slept with those Chicago pickers all the way to California?  The first trial and tribulation!

‘I tied everything to the saxophone.  It became a science.  I could get it all on in fifteen minutes. I threw that net over my saxaphone, the net that’s on the bathroom ceiling now.  I got that net in the attic of the Elk’s Club.  Alright, then what I did was I had a great big green garbage bag crammed full of clothes, and everything else I could cram in there, and I put one green garbage bag in one side of the net, in the other side of the net, another green garbage bag, and I put the net on top, which neatly tied everything down.  So it was like two pouches on each side of the horn.  Then went the blanket I got for Christmas and the sleeping bag, looks like some other type of suitcase there in the photo, and my hammer.  My hammer got me across the country, because I used my hammer for everything.  People always asked me what the hammer was, and I always told everybody, “I got the wife and kids back there!”  It was my favorite joke, and it got everybody laughing. 

‘You notice here’s my first mistake right here; see that green bag with no net over that green part?  That’s where my shoes are hangin’ out.  Very first thing that left were my shoes.  Those were my dress shoes, and I wound up looking for work in marine boots!

‘Well, that first day I rode from before the sun came up ‘til well after the sun went down; I just drove and drove and drove, and I wanted to get so far, so fast, out of Michigan.  I really started hating Michigan, because California was out there.’

He took a sip of coffee and Doctor Gonzo meowed loudly at the door.  The boys downstairs were grilling pork chops under our window and the afternoon sun had reached halfway down into the patio, lighting the ivy as it moved. 

“What made you decide to come to California, Tony?”

“Let’s see if I can remember the name --- it was CR Disco, Plainwell, and his name was Carl, and San Francisco seemed like the city for me.  He said it’s fast, fun, never a dull moment, fast people moving, quick wits, everybody stayed up all night; it was a musician’s haven and a place for bartenders and there was nothing but bars and places and people and women!  That had a lot to do with it.  I wanted to go where the women were.  California girls!  They don’t make a song about Florida girls!”

He grinned, took another sip of coffee and dropped into a reverie, thinking about California girls. 

“Well, Carl really had me cookin’ on San Francisco.  It was modern, it was jet set, it was jazz.  It was all those things.  And Kalamazoo, they roll up the sidewalks at night, and you couldn’t get anybody to dance with you, and I was rambunctious; ‘young and dumb and fulla c---.’  That’s the saying.  Actually, Gypsie told me that one.  This big, fat woman that was the sexiest fat girl I’ve ever seen.  This girl was so fat, she was just huge!  But she was sexy at the same time.  And she knew how to handle her fat!

‘Well, the first sunrise was spectacular.  The sun was a big, round ball coming up.  What really struck me was “94-West.”  I really liked that word “West.”  And the way I figured it, if I kept going west long enough, I’d eventually get there.  That’s the way I figured it.  All I had to do was keep going west.  For months before I left home the idea was so tantalizing --- just getting on the bike and heading west.  So easy to do. 

‘I went around Chicago, that was a big thing, and down through Illinois, where the sun started getting hot, so I took off my helmet. I really wanted to feel that freedom.  The farther away I got, the feeling of no return.  There was no return now.  I jumped into it, and now I had to swim.  In my mind I had everything planned all the way to San Francisco; after that, it was just black.  I had no idea what would happen once I got there.  I just shut that out of my mind --- refused to think that time was going to keep going after I got there.  Everything went straight to San Francisco, then stopped. 

‘I went from Kalamazoo to St. Louis and then some the first day.  Some guy had told me the underpasses were a good place to sleep, so I kinda kept my eyes peeled.  They were dusty, filthy, and close to traffic. I thought, “This guy is nuts!  I’m not sleeping under there!”  Somewhere in the Missouri hills I bought a cheap camp ground for four dollars and just pitched my little make-shift tarp for the first night.  I was really shaky about it; I slept on some plastic and I had the tarp over me.  Woke up with a huge spider on the inside of the tent and bites across my forehead, but it was such a crisp, beautiful morning!  And when I got up, I raised my head as a young man.  This was the first time in my life that a decision was totally my own.  I was totally alone, I didn’t know a soul, and I was moving west, and everybody that I ran into was moving west also. 

‘I was flyin’ along, watching the changes in the terrain, certain things growing here, different things growing there, hills and rocks, and I kept thinkin’, “now I know I’m not in Michigan!”

He finished his coffee, picked up Doctor Gonzo and padded down the hall, down the back stairs, and deposited the cat in the patio. 

“Damn pest,” he said.  “I got a cat because I thought I had a ghost.  People said they felt strange in here --- cold chills and things.  I had the place exorcized.  But the cat didn’t seem uncomfortable, and he’s still here.  He’s company, though.  Sometimes, it gets a little lonely here.”

‘Well, the second day, I ate the granola bar Phyllis gave me.  Phyllis told me not to eat it until I had to eat it, and the very second day, I ate it!  Most of the money went into the tank; I would ride it until it went on reserve --- wouldn’t get off until it went on reserve.  I’ll tell you, I soon started to realize how huge this country really is.

‘In Oklahoma I ran into Tom.  Tom was on his way to Arizona.  We just started riding together.  He was on a Yamaha 1100, and I was on a Suzuki 550, and he said, “Why don’t we split a room?”  and I said, “I’m not gay,” and he said, “Neither am I!”  and I said, “Great!” and we split a room that night.  He was a good ol’ kinda guy; a drummer, so we talked music, and we got to be buddies.  Went across Oklahoma and the top of Texas, and Texas was Big Sky.  Around Amarillo, we ran into another guy who was a preacher.  He’d put all his money into the sport of biking, and he was “Mr. Prepared”.  He was hauling a trailer behind his motorcycle, and he was a ‘Howdy-Doody’ guy with a beard, and both of us were standing there smoking a joint.  Here he comes with the helmet with the visor on it, and he’s got the gloves and his full-dressed Yamaha and every gadget imaginable for a motorcycle, and he’s waving to us “Hi guys!  Wait up for me!”.  He gets off, and the very first thing that happens is his bike falls over.  Smash!  And when a bike like that falls over it takes like a million guys just to pick the damn thing back up.  Oil’s leakin’ all over!  Turned out the preacher had left preaching and was heading from Texas to Oregon, and he was out trying to find out what it was all about. 

‘So now it was a trio riding together, three origins, and three destinations; I’m going to California, Tom to Arizona, and the preacher to Oregon, all on Highway 40, and we were all in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, when we ran into Cato.  Cato rode a Harley and he didn’t like our bikes because ‘you couldn’t hear ‘em’.  Tom and Cato traded bikes for a while and Cato got off and said, “I couldn’t hear it, Man!”  Cato knew the local cops, the cops knew him, and he was a ‘low rider’ on the Harley, and he showed us around the city. 

‘That night it started to rain.  The preacher had everything, he was all prepared, and he set up his tent which came out of the trailer.  All the rest of us, ya know, “Shit!  Rain!  I didn’t plan on rain!”  I crawled into the tent, then Tom crawled into the tent, then Cato got into the tent, and the tent was built for two.  And then all of a sudden here comes this young couple --- never did know who they were!  The guy looked like he was from a rich family and he was kind of good looking, and she was kinda pretty, and she had long hair, and neither of them were prepared.  They didn’t have anything with them, and they were going somewhere, and all of a sudden it was raining on them and it was night and they didn’t know what the hell they were doing out there, and they kinda climbed into the tent, too. 

‘Well, turns out the preacher had never even seen a marijuana joint.  I mean, this guy was totally sheltered!  He had grown up in some sort of a church, and we’re smoking joints, and he’s thinking, ‘this is marijuana!’  and I handed him a joint and he says, ‘No! No!  No thanks!’  His tent is just full of people now, and it’s raining and eventually a bottle of wine gets passed around and we’re laughing and giggling, and we know that tomorrow none of us are gonna ever see each other again.  We were all together in one tent on a magic rainy night, and it was fantastic.  We partied all night, and the rain beat on the tent all night, and I was a young, green kid, and we all really got to know each other in that one night. 

‘Next morning all my stuff was soaked.  I had a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and some other stuff I put in the preacher’s trailer, and I was going to ride with him to a certain stop where he was going to give me my stuff back, and Tom was going to exit down into Arizona.  I don’t know what happened on that expressway, but all of a sudden I was on the exit with Tom, and there went my can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew off in the other direction with the preacher.  He’s frantically waving, “What are you doing?  What are you doing?” and I’m waving back, “I don’t know! I don’t know!  Goodbye!”  And Tom was “What are you doing with me?”  and “I don’t know!  I don’t know!”  Then I got off at the next exit and ‘goodbye’ to Tom.  I stopped in Albuquerque and sat in a Laundromat drying my clothes. 

‘Next day I went from Albuquerque to Needles, California, battling the rain in New Mexico.  It was just total rain, clouds pouring rain way over there, then clouds over there, then I got hit.  In Needles I had to stop because the wind was like a blast furnace, and I was the hottest I’ve ever been in my life.  I couldn’t believe how hot it was.  My lips were chapped and my skin was burned.  When I pulled into Needles, the very first thing I wanted to do was jump into the river.  I said to somebody, “Where can I get to the water?”  and he said, “The water’s right over there, but you’re not gonna be able to swim in it.”  I said, “Why?” 

“It’s too cold.”

And I said, “Can’t be that cold!”  He was right.  I couldn’t get past my knees.  So I cooled my feet off and got back on the bike. 

‘Needles was where I ran into this guy who was ‘real Hippy, Man!  Hey, guy!’  and he kinda led me to some friends of his who were Mexican guys, and I stayed in their house and watched ‘Chips’ on T.V., and they made chili bets; you know, who can eat the whole chili?  I took one little bite out of this jalapeno, and it was like the hottest thing I’d eaten in a long time; and the guy tried to eat the jalapeno and only could get past one bite, and all of a sudden he wasn’t so bad anymore!  It came time to camp out, those guys were going to bed, but I stayed there as long as I could because it was air conditioned.  Even in the middle of the night, it was still horribly hot.  After I left, I pulled up to a curb, bumped into it, and my Arthur Fulmer helmet, which sat on the gas tank, (Here’s my Arthur Fulmer helmet in the picture), fell off onto a lawn. I left it there while I went to look for a place to sleep, and forgot to go back for it.  The next morning, of course, my helmet was gone.  Forever.  And that’s where my helmet went.  Never saw it again.  Needles, California.  My Arthur Fulmer helmet.  Hundred and twenty dollar helmet.

‘So then, the last stretch was the Mojave Desert on Highway 5, and I was cruisin’ along there, and all of a sudden that’s where the darkness started coming over me.  I was reaching my destination and my money was running out and I had no idea what I was gonna do, ya know?  I got to Oakland, and things started to get pretty depressing.  Everybody around me was going to San Francisco and they all knew where they were going.  There was an empty pit in my stomach.  The sun was going down, and I was all weather beaten, and I was on my last tank of gas, and I remember coming across the Bay Bridge and shouting, “I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge!”  And there was San Francisco.  It was a cloudy day, the traffic was heavy, but I thought I’d take a victory loop because I finally made San Francisco, and it was really there. 

I could see the St. Francis and was staring at the glass elevators on the side of the building, and when I looked down this guy was pulling out in front of me.  The first thing he did after I ploughed into him was hop out of the car and yell, “Man, it’s your fault, Man!  You didn’t watch where you was goin’!  It’s your f----fault, Man!  Whun’tcha watch where you’re goin’, Man!”  I smashed everything, my pack was all lopsided and I was on gas fumes anyway, and everything was kinda flopped over.  I thought, ‘Oh God!  Lost the turn signal!  Lost the fairing!  Well, that’s gone.  Well, O.K., keep going!’  and began frantically kickin’ the pieces of glass over to the curb.  A crowd of course gathered, and I shouted, “Just, ah, nothing happened!  It’s O.K…  Go away! Just get away from me!”  My fairing was in a million bits, and some old guy came up to me and said, “Oh you really shoulda got his license number,” while I tried to tie things back down as best I could.  Then other people came up and somebody said, “Ya know, you should put that sleeping bag in the front on the wheel,” and everybody’s tryin’ to give me advice, and I thought wildly, ‘everybody shut up!  Get away from me!  I just drove across the country….!’  My first five minutes in San Francisco, and my bike’s sprawled all over the street! 

‘What happened then was I kept getting on the wrong bridge.  All of a sudden, whoops!  I’m on the bridge again!  Heading for the wrong side of the Bay.  I had in my pocket, carefully guarded, the phone number of the father of a friend of my sister’s, and he lived some place called Menlo Park, which I had been told was in San Francisco.  That was all I had goin’ for me.  Well, I didn’t know where the hell Menlo Park was --- went back and forth three more times across the bridge and even then, ended up on the wrong side of the Bay.  And each time I had to pay fare, and when you only got ten dollars left and have gone on reserve, that was another nice little feature.  I finally went to the Greyhound Bus Station to find out where the hell I was.  I was disgusted, worn to a frazzle, and disoriented.  I had to find a place to sleep, and I was right in the middle of the city.  It was panic.  I thought, ‘This is the black part that I imagined.  Well, here it is.  What do I do now?’  Funny, now everybody knows where Menlo Park is, but at that time, nobody ever heard of it! 

‘So I went to a shopping center, trying to find Menlo Park. I kept calling that phone number, but no answer, so I sat on a curb, my head in my hands, next to my crumpled bike.  All of a sudden a car pulls up and a woman calls out, “Are you all right?”  I said, “Yeah, I’m fine.  Thanks.”  She drove on, then backed up, got out and, very embarrassed, handed me a five dollar bill.  She said, “Here, maybe you can use this.”  I couldn’t believe it. 

I finally found out the way to get to Menlo Park, which was to go down and cross over the San Mateo Bridge, which meant another fare!  The San Mateo Bridge is the longest bridge in the world, or in California anyway, and by then it was starting to rain and really get cold.  The bridge is low, and you cold almost feel the waves, and with the heavy cross winds it was really miserable.  But I finally got across the bridge and on the Camino Real.  I went south, and south and south, and finally got to Menlo Park. By then it was midnight and I’d been traveling since before dawn.  So I stopped in this coffee shop, all ready to fall apart, and had some coffee.  I felt so grubby, and wind burned and tired.  Finally ended up at a 7-11, and there found a couple of kids hanging out in front and asked them if they knew where I could sleep.  It was really embarrassing.  “Oh yeah!  You can sleep in the park.  We got this old bum Charlie sleeps in the park.  He never gets bothered.  And there’s showers right across the volleyball field.” 

I had already rode past Lander’s place (he was the owner of the phone number), one of those plush condominiums with a grand piano in the window --- I’m sure I was going to ring the doorbell at midnight!  Didn’t even know the guy!  So I went to Charlie’s park at the end of the road, and as I drove up into the park the very first thing happens was the cops came all over me.  Searchlights all over.  But they took a liking to me, and I told them what my situation was, I just drove in from Michigan.  I told them I was at the end of my road and really didn’t know what to do.  “Well,” one of them said, “there’s a space over there by the swing set.  It’s kind of soft over there.”  And then he suggested the bushes.  It was harder ground, but more concealed.  However, it was a couple of feet from the railroad track, and, he said, the only problem was, at six in the morning the train goes by.  I wanted to camp on the grass, it was so nice and soft, so I asked him what about the lawn?  He said no, because the sprinklers go on at night. 

‘So those sprinklers would go on in a circuit around the whole park – go on here – go on there. The cop said the best deal was the bushes.  After they left, I was so tired, and my stuff was falling apart, and I was so desperate I was ready to throw my sleeping bag on the street, crawl out there and hope nobody would run over me!  But I checked it out over by the bushes.  The ground was all rocky and the railroad track was right there!

‘So I waited for the sprinklers to stop in one area and pitched my sleeping bag on the nice, soft grass. It was so comfortable, and I was wearing my “Micro 3” bikini-type orange silk underwear because I was in California now.  I’d just dozed off when – damn if those sprinklers didn’t go off around the park a couple of times!  When I sat up I was already soaking, and “Here they come again!”  it was like, how much can a person take?  First thing I think of is, I had to get my bike out of there.  All my stuff is spread out all over everywhere, and it’s getting big, thick, fat, cold drops of rain.  So I hop out of my sleeping bag, and I’m in my orange silk bikini underwear, and I grab the bike.  So I wait for the rain!  Then it’s over, then I got this much time to get everything out of there before the rain comes around again.  So the first thing I did was slip on the wet grass, and it had just been mowed, so there was grass sticking all over me, and --- I dropped the bike!  Very first thing the bike falls over!  Then I had to pick the bike back up, and I’m trying to push it ---.  It’s the only time in my life I can remember laughing and crying at the same time.  I was so frustrated, because you know, how much can a guy take?  If I would have seen that on film --- this skinny white kid with the rib cage, right?  He’s out there with all the grass sticking all over everything, in the little bikini underwear, tryin’ to move the bike out of the sprinklers.  And the sprinklers are just doin’ what they do every night with their big arms.  So I dragged the bike through the sandy volleyball court --- it was the shortest way out of the sprinklers --- and then on the other side of that was the play ground, which was wood chips!  And I had bare feet!  And the bike wouldn’t stand up on the wood chips.  I made several wild trips back and forth across the volleyball court, in between the rain, retrieving a few things at a time, and every time I ploughed across the court the wet things got covered with sand.  And every time the sprinklers went around, the stuff I’d left behind got drenched one more time.  Even my saxophone.  They got that!  But by then I was getting my wits about me and more organized.  I’d been across the volleyball court a dozen times, had fallen a few times.  The whole thing was such a buffoonery!  And it all started out with my helmet getting stolen.  That was still the same day.  It seemed like forever and ever ago.  I’d been across the Mojave Desert, and here I was trapped in the sprinklers in the middle of the night.  I was so disgusted and tired, I just threw the sleeping bag under the slide.  I slept under the slide after all, just like the cop said. 

‘Some time during that wild night, I vaguely recall a girl.  She was fat, and fat girls, I thought, are generally more friendly.  She was just a girl in the park, and it was like talking to a human being --- a human being that didn’t have my problems.  I talked to her about San Francisco, and all the while I imagined her saying, “Why don’t you come and stay on my floor?”

I woke up the next morning, and the first thing I saw were these joggers.  You know, this is Menlo Park.  They drive Mercedes.  They’ve gotten out of the city now and they live out in the suburbs, and they’re very rich.  And you know, the ladies have the little balls on the back of their shoes.  I’d see the joggers looking at me every morning.  They’d see a motorcycle, they’d see all this stuff strewn everywhere, and they’d see some guy wrapped up in a sleeping bag. 

When I woke up that first morning, I was still pretty high on California.  It was amazing, even though I was sitting there with absolutely nothing going for me.  I was still so awed by --- sitting there in California.  This is California!  There’s a real thing called the California High.  You’ve heard of the California High?  It’s just by being in California you feel high.  Because I was sitting in the park feeling GOOD!  I was in California!  …………………………………..


By Jean McCormack Perez-Banuet 

The Life and Death of a Helmet

Now that the helmet law has been repealed here in Michigan, and motorcyclists are free to ride without a helmet, I feel compelled to tell this story. 

In 1994, only three years after we opened Life Cycle, our motorcycle shop, Dave took a trip on his dual sport bike to Oklahoma to see the International Six Day Enduro. He rode with a couple on a Gold Wing pulling a trailer, who were planning on camping there. I had decided not to go this time for no apparent reason, other than I felt strangely disinclined.

Dave and Dennis were excellent riders, and could negotiate any traffic or road problems with ease.  Their trip went smoothly, even when crossing the Poplar Street Bridge over the Mississippi River into St. Louis, where the water separates Illinois from Missouri.  

But not so for another rider, whose touring cruiser was down in a big heap in an oncoming lane way on the other side of the bridge.  Dave got a quick glance of the accident scene, blue and red cop lights swirling, and thought it was an unusual spot for a big bike to go down; a straightaway on a lovely, sunny day. 

Well, of course they all forgot about this unfortunate and fleeting incident after a long weekend of witnessing the incredibly astounding ISDE right here in the United States, quite a big deal.  And as they were on their way back home to Michigan, still high with the golden euphoria from this marvelous motorcycle event, along with thousands of other riders, I’m sure it was the last thing on their minds as they approached the looming bridge over the Mississippi in the rain. 

Dave was on the Transalp following Dennis and Susan’s rig onto the bridge, when up ahead, first the Gold Wing, then the trailer wobbled violently as they ran over something in the road.  Dave barely had time to slow down before hitting the treacherous expansion joint of the bridge, then experienced the added attraction of his narrow dual sport front tire lodging perfectly into the metal channel that ran diagonally across the road.  At 65 mph, his handlebars locked to the left and were wrenched from his hands.  Dennis checked his large side mirror just in time to see Dave launch over the handlebars behind him, “doing the Superman,” as he technically described it. 

The first thing Dave felt was his thigh painfully hitting the handlebar as he and the bike began their somersault.  The next thing he felt was cement hitting the back of his helmeted head.  Then there was a short blank.

Next thing he knew, he was conscious of sliding the slick road for a long time on his back.  He hoped he wouldn’t meet a car.  When he came to a stop, he scooched off to the side of the bridge and leaned on the concrete barrier wall.  Here, he noticed all the rips and holes in his shredded rain suit.  A woman wearing an ISDE sweatshirt approached and sat down with him, patted his arm, tried to comfort him.  She said she saw the whole thing.  She and her husband were driving behind him and, being motorcyclists, were allowing him plenty of room. 

Before he knew it, Dennis and Susan had turned around and come back, and the police and ambulance were there.  The medic kept up a conversation with Dave, trying to discern his competence, while the police from Missouri argued with the police from Illinois over whose jurisdiction was responsible, since he apparently slid across the state line. 

He ended up not choosing a hospital in either state.  The removal of his fullface HJC helmet found his head and face intact, except for a bruise on his nose and a bump on his head, where he suffered a slight concussion. 

His favorite helmet was now considered compromised, or “dead.”  There was a big, shredded gouge in the lower back of the helmet, an area on the head not protected by a half helmet.  There was a second smash to the back of the helmet where he must have bounced again, and a long, deep scrape running from the top all the way down the front of the face shield where he must have slid on his still handsome face. 

Talk about a helmet doing its job.  Talk about the best $170.00 ever spent.  The death of this helmet was now priceless to us.  Even though his body was bruised and sore, he walked away from this accident in which his head hit cement at 65 mph.  This has been the only serious motorcycle accident my husband has had in 35 years. 

I often think of all the things that wouldn’t have happened, the local history changed, all the lives we wouldn’t have affected with the thrilling sport of motorcycling had a bad choice of head protection altered his outcome that day.  

We wouldn’t be standing in our store today, watching happy people come and go…

Ever since that day, I look at helmets differently.  I sell helmets differently. When customers tell me that a helmet probably won’t make a difference if they go down, I tell them this story. 

Not long after, Scott Hong, owner of the HJC helmet company, bought back that helmet from my reluctant husband, who wanted to keep it as the best demonstration tool ever.  But Scott trumped him with a speech about saving more lives through the science of study and research.  So, in the spirit of doing the right thing, the helmet was passed on to live again.  In a different way.

Stay smart.  Keep your head.