Thank goodness for bicycle helmets
It’s springtime here in Portland, and when I went out (on a sunny day that promises to be bookmarked by rain and/or snow) all of the trees were in the throes of flowering and/or budding. The branches of the budding trees are hanging much lower than they would normally, and one tree along Clinton Street had a nasty surprise; the end of a branch was dead, so this large heavy piece of wood was hanging down into the road, not more than about 6 feet above the ground.
I only saw the dead branch hanging there a second or so before I reached it (at ~22mph) and only had time to lower my head and let the helmet take the impact. Which it did; there was a tremendous crack and my head rang like a bell for the next 2-3 blocks, and when I reached the Big Big Store at Seven Corners I took off my helmet and saw a brand new dent in it right about where I felt the impact.
So I’ll probably have to sell some more stuff on e-bay so I can get a replacement helmet sometime soon (either that or go back to the ancient specialized mushroom-head helmet that I took out of service last year in favo(u)r of the new helmet.) But in the grand scheme of things I’m much happier that the dent is in my helmet instead of on the surface of my brain. Helmets can be replaced. Brains can’t.