Tough Decisions

Tough Decisions

Recently I had to make a tough decision.  In many ways I feel that the decision I made was right and in many ways I feel it was wrong.  You see, in September I celebrated a birthday and I only had one wish for my birthday this year.  That wish was to get a birthday ride in with my daughter.  My birthday this year happened to fall on a week day and I mostly don’t get to ride much during the week due to long work days and a long commute that doesn’t get me home until late in the evenings.  However, for my birthday I had planned to leave work a couple hours early to fulfill my wish.  So early that morning I loaded the bikes into the car so when I picked up Addie from school we could head straight to the trails.  Everything was working out as planned.  I picked up Addie and by 5pm we were sitting at the trail-head ready to go.  We unloaded the bikes, pumped up the tires, went to grab our helmets and …. ugh…… no helmets to be found in the car!  I quickly did the math in my head and realized if we jump back in the car, drive 45 minutes home to get our helmets and then 45 minutes back to the trail it would be 6:30pm and darkness would be rolling in.  Now I am a big advocate on ALWAYS wearing your helmet when riding.  However, on this day I was going to go against my better judgment.  I looked at Addie and said “Today we are going to do something that we will never do again!  We are going to ride very slow and are going to be very careful since we do not have helmets.”  I could tell by her facial expression that she was pretty surprised that we were actually going to ride without helmets and to be honest, I was pretty surprised myself.  We actually rode for close to two hours that day and God was certainly watching over us because neither one of us took a spill.  And that is pretty surprising in itself because most of the time when we hit the trails at least one family member always seems to go down, thus coming home banged up in some way. 

(Always wear your helmet!)

 

In many ways I was wrong with the decision that I made.  Accidents happen all the time and you only have one brain.  Riding without a helmet is not something I practice and will hopefully never do again.  However, driving home that night I was also happy with the decision I made.  I was happy because I know that my daughter will always throw it in my face about that one time that we rode without helmets because I forgot them.  And every time she does that I will also remember that it was the night of my birthday and I got to enjoy a bike ride with my beautiful little girl. 

Thanks for reading.

Billy