Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Please Reply to: Diane Day  fourdays@xxxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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That's one of the reasons why I ride endurance. I want to be left alone to ride 
as I will and please don't even make the attempt to tell me what to wear to 
include the helmet. I have seen my share of injuries over the years and most 
were to other body parts, not the head

It was not so long ago that I would have voiced similar sentiments.  In 
jumping, in dressage, on the trail, helmets were hot, uncomfortable, and ugly 
and if I didnt have to, I didnt wear one.  But when I started this sport, my 
husband asked me to wear one.  He had just been to a medical seminar where one 
speaker there was a woman who had been taking riding lessons when her horse 
slipped in mud and fell,throwing her to the ground where she suffered a severe 
brain injury.  She was there encouraging the MDs to do more in the way of rehab 
for their patients.  My husband thought he should do more in the way of 
rehabing his wife from her wicked ways;  so to stop his hand wringing, I wore 
one.  I muttered thru the beginning of every as I put that horrid helmet on. 
But one day I went to a ride which had one loop named Flat Rock trail or 
something to that effect.  It should have been named Very Big, Really Huge Flat 
Rock Trail. My fine steed and I came around a curve to meet a mass of solid 
granite which enveloped the entire trail. It was like hitting ice on ski slope. 
First I thought we should go one way, I changed my mind and asked him to go the 
other way; he obliged me but it was all a bit much and he stumbled.  Rather 
that go over his head, I threw my leg over the side and landed on two feet but 
with such force that I immediately fell backwards with a very loud whack as my 
head hit the rock. Had I not been wearing a helmet, I know I would've left that 
trail facing up.  My kids wouldve been doomed to Big Macs and beefaroni, my 
husband to griping about his incorrible wife to every passerby.  Its like 
everything else, freedom comes at a price.   While the writer of the first 
paragraph may not have seen many head injuries from horse accidents in her wide 
circle of experience, neurosurgeons make enough from them that it pays for not 
only their kids but their kids' friends to go to Harvard.
DianeD


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