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BRAIN DUMBAGE IS BAD… Tip of the Day: use a good helmet...
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Location: Blogs Mat's Journal |
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| Posted by: mat |
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 2:48 PM |
I have hit my head many times. I’ve had over a hundred concussions. Some hits my taste buds would change and I wouldn’t like the same foods. I lost my taste buds completely once. It took seven years to come back....
BRAIN DUMBAGE IS BAD…
I have hit my head many times. I’ve had over a hundred concussions. Some hits my taste buds would change and I wouldn’t like the same foods. I lost my taste buds completely once. It took seven years to come back. I would have to eat the spiciest food to just have some flavor. One time I hit so hard I lost my memory for over a year. My brain seemed like a crashed hard drive. It had all this information in it and it had to be reformatted or something to retrieve it again. I never knew when it was going to come back. I remember my wife was talking about when we went to Japan and I was like, “I have never been to Japan”, and she would say, “yeah we’ve been there 6 or 7 times.” I’d get some pictures out and start looking at them and a memory would spark. Then it would connect to all these other memories and I would retrieve another lost life memory. This went on for over a year until I hope I got most of them back.
I’ve been injured in all kinds of ways, but when you injure your head, what you assess you injury with is what is damaged, so you never know if it’s going to heal. You can’t just wiggle your brain like your arm and to see if it is getting better. It makes you very nervous and paranoid. The thoughts you get when you brain heals aren’t the most pleasant. I’m telling you all this because I’ve been riding for a longtime, I’ve had multiply experiences like this, so in a way I could be your future, so please BE WARNED. There is no smoke and mirrors in BMX. It’s real and you have to pay the injury tax if you want to progress. Most head injuries you get on a bike happen hitting face first. Imagine if I never had protection on my face. I wouldn’t be here to stress the importance of a full face. In fact, I would have never got past the first couple years of my riding career, and would have never had the opportunity to contribute what I have to BMX. I can’t stress the importance enough.
If it’s one piece of equipment you should be able to trust your life with it is your helmet! Straight up, I would have died ten times over if I chose to ride with a skate style helmet (a.k.a. brain bucket). Whatever convenience it may offer is not worth your life. Respecting the dangers and challenges that BMX offers. Gear up like a warrior to take them on. That is what is hardcore to me. You don’t have as much option to bail with out hitting your head on a bike. You have to take it. The same ‘slam physics’ on a skateboard don’t apply on a bike. Bikes are Gnarly...The Gnarliest. RESPECT the dangers by getting a good Full-Face helmet. It’s a lot cooler to live to tell about your slam.
BMX Crash Test dummy,
-Mat Hoffman
Photo
Evel’s girl took this picture in his RV when Evel was passing through my town. We grabbed some food together with my wife Jaci and our 12-week-old daughter, Giavanna. This picture is classic. It was taken in March, 2001.
A few days before this picture was taken, I was riding my giant ramp to break my world record for high air on a BMX bike that I set 10 years earlier. I set a new vertical height just over 50 feet. After I set the new record I felt I had more in me so I pushed it harder. I was towed into the 24’ vertical ramp at 60 mph and cleared 52 feet. I took a slam, falling over five stories to my head. I skipped across the ground to a stop. I was knocked out for a few minutes. I woke up to an ambulance ride to the hospital. My Simpson helmet I was testing out broke and a piece of it cut my lip half off. A plastic surgeon had to reattach it. I was also going in and out of consciousness for a few days. Most of the time, I was pretty spaced out flashing back.. In the picture, you can see a steri-strip covering up the stitches on my lip and both my eyes are black. That would have been the last challenge I took on if it wasn’t for wearing a full face helmet….
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