I started commuting by bicycle a long time ago. It was so long ago I have to get my calculator to know for sure. Let’s see…I was living in Norman, Oklahoma, and had just started back to school. 1993. That is 29 years. Twenty. Nine. Years. Man. Time sure gets away from us.
I never wore a helmet back then. Until mom bought me one—she insisted, since her neighbor owned a bike shop and he said it was important. Why all of a sudden do we have to wear helmets?? I rode bikes all the time as a kid, and never wore one. Oh well, I guess we wear helmets for the same reason we wear seat belts. We know more things now. So I’ll wear it, if you’re buying it. Problem is the helmet could fit in the same category of the jeans I wrote about earlier—on sale at K-Mart, a couple of sizes too small, and I think it was a hockey helmet. But I wore it anyway, most of the time. Now I wear one all the time, but no K-mart “blue light” specials for me. Only the best for Mrs. Kearney’s youngest son.
For Christmas this year, Lisa bought me a GoPro camera. I told her that since the first GoPro I had was a long time ago—one of the first they made, and my next camera was the Garmin Virb, which wasn’t all the good in terms of video quality, but she is amazing, and bought me the most recent release—the GoPro Hero 10. It does things that I didn’t know any camera could do. It records in 4K, at 30fps. For you non-film types, that’s thirty frames per second. That’s pretty good! I’ve seen a setting option on the camera that allows a frame rate of 60 fps—wow! I haven’t gone there yet, because YouTube and Facebook will dumb down any video you upload, so it doesn’t much matter. But this post isn’t about camera quality or frame rates or anything like that. Sorry I got sidetracked. It happens
Having a GoPro on board is nice because it makes it real, when I talk about a close call I had on my ride. I talk about them when they happen, but talk is cheap and a picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a million words! If I’d had a camera mounted to my handlebars last year I wouldn’t be going round and round with Falcon Insurance Company of Oak Brook, Illinois—the crappiest insurance company ever. One of their customers ran a stop sign and hit me with her car, she admitted fault, and her admission is reflected in the police report. Now the insurance company is trying to stick me for half of the liability, because their client “remembered it more clearly” when she got home. Yeah. I’ll bet she did.
I did have the camera rolling yesterday on my ride home. I was on the bike trail headed south, could see the big sand truck approaching. I was prepared for the driver to pull a bonehead move, and he didn’t disappoint, as reflected in the video.
Take a look. What do you think?
Out Here in the Middle 