Thank You S-One Helmets!

In preparation for the trip, we've been looking for the best gear to bring with us. Crucial to the trip is the board, and we're grateful for the help from Kahuna Creations and their awesome Black Wave board. Just as important as the board, in my opinion, is the helmet. Both are essential and one should not go without the other. If you have a board and no helmet, don't ride it! Get a helmet first. If you have a helmet and no board, well...I suppose you can wear the helmet around. If you really want to. But unless you're trying to start a safety oriented fashion statement you probably want a board too.

My current helmet is a little small for my head and gets uncomfortable on long rides. I started doing some research to find a new helmet, and I was astounded to find out that my current helmet wasn't certified for safety. I even called the company's customer service to ask them about it. Longboard For Love has been looking for the best helmets for the trip. Safe helmets first. Stylish helmets second. Great news everyone...we found them.

We've been able to work something out with S-One Helmet Company. They have been friendly and helpful with us. We emailed them, explaining the project and our need, and within 45 minutes they had emailed back with more than enough help for us. What prompted us to contact S-One Helmets is their concern for safety. They really emphasize their dual certified helmets the most, and tried to inform their customers about helmet safety instead of and I liked that.

I'll talk about helmet certification in a later post, but this video does an incredible job at explaining and demonstrating what it means.

You may ask me, "Mason why should I wear a helmet? It messes up my hair. Its uncomfortable. I've never crashed yet." "Well," I may reply, "allow me to ascend my soapbox and tell you why."

BECAUSE NOT WEARING A HELMET IS IDIOTIC!!!

Every year, in the USA, there are about 900 deaths from injuries due to bicycle crashes. In 2011 there were 42 deaths related in skateboarding. Now these are deaths, not the concussions and brain damage that can easily be done to your skull and the three pounds of tapioca pudding inside your head. I wrote a post earlier about traumatic brain injury (TBI) and what happens. There are on average 473,947 emergency department visits for TBI each year for children 0-14 years old. The CDC says "Children aged 0 to 4 years, older adolescents aged 15 to 19 years, and adults aged 65 years and older are most likely to sustain a TBI." Below I've shown a chart with the statistics of TBI annually in the United States. The chart brings up a good question at the bottom. How many more people hit their head and suffer damage or bruising to their brain and never receive treatment for it.

So...what does a helmet do? Why don't I just sit inside and protect my head from the frightening world outside? Well...what a helmet does is, in short, slow down your head. When you crash your head is moving at a certain velocity. Upon impact your head comes to a sudden stop. The skull stops but the brain keeps moving and bounces around; bruising itself and tearing on the bone in the skull. If you are wearing a helmet it lengthens the time it takes for your head to stop when it hits something. This causes the impact to be less severe and optimizes your brains chances of survival in an impact. This is why we need to protect our heads. This is why S-One helmets is so wonderful. Because they care so much about certifying your helmets and protecting our heads. Wear a helmet!

The S-One Lifer

Now, if you are one of the valiant ones who has made it to the end of the post I have one more thing for you. My Behavioral Neurobiology professor made each of us students make an oath to him in class. We stood up, put our hands over our hearts, and promised to always wear helmets. He was kind enough to share the pledge we made with me and I've included it here. I expect all of you to make the same pledge. Post it in the comments with your name filled in, and wherever you are, stand up, put your hand over your heart, and pledge to wear a helmet. If anyone looks at your funny, invite them over, I'm sure they need it too.

I [your name] do solemnly swear that I will always wear a helmet when I engage in potentially dangerous activities such as riding a motorcycle, riding a scooter, skateboarding, riding a bike, skiing, horseback riding, playing hockey, lacrosse, football, and baseball, white-water rafting and kayaking, ice skating, roller skating, roller blading, sledding, unicycling, etc.