Please...

If you bike, ALWAYS wear your helmet. Mine saved my brain tonight.

I was biking across the Walnut Street bridge when a car came flying down an intersecting cross street. I saw that the driver was about to run the red light and that they didn't see me. I hit the brakes. With the rain and wet road surface, my wheels locked up and skidded on the metal bridge joint embedded in the pavement. My bike crashed on top of me and with my feet pinned by the bike, the upper part of my body accelerated towards the ground. The first part of my body to make contact was a spot just above my left temple. I sensed that my head was hit hard and prepared to black out (I have some experience getting knocked out: by a golf club--thanks Mollie!--and several baseball incidents), but quickly realized that the sensation I'd felt was not my skull hitting the pavement but the foam of my helmet compacting. I was able to get up, dust off my scrapes, and get back on the bike. I have no doubt that if I had not been wearing my helmet, I'd be in HUP (Penn Hospital) right now, or worse.