Plant Trees SF Events 2025 Archive: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

Event

 
Kids must always wear bike helmet and the strap should be snug enough that it won't fall off if kid falls off

Often strict or stern parenting doesn't work so better to find positive reinforcement to have kid like the helmet

I suffered a basal skull fracture in 1990 when a car clipped me as I bicycled sandhill Road to  Portola Valley loop coming back on Alpine coming home by Rosati's Alpine Inn a very bad guy driver cut me off and clip me with his trunk so I hit the asphalt and blacked out for a moment
Good Samaritans tracked him down and got him so I had an insurance claim
My uncle got me 21K in 1990 for my basil skull fracture
Off. I I stayed overnight in the hospital it would've been so much more of a settlement

In my opinion kids should be strapped up with helmet knee pads wrist pads and elbow pads and then let them loose 

Ideally if they could do that for a year or more or ideally an entire childhood whatever and learn how to fall down 

Wrist pads in my opinion are number two and importance after helmet 

Knee pads are number three

Elbow pads are in fourth place because they're optional but this is how kids should start out cause somehow someday in their life they have to learn how to fall down again and again and again

Rinse and repeat

Most kids aren't gonna wanna always do elbow pads and knee pads

This should be required before they attempt to go bare elbow or bare wrist or bare knee

But helmet is a must and I love wearing bicycle helmets cause they're light and they don't get in the way and I know how important they are

This now is our new magic trick how can we get kids to understand this?

My best friend Dan in high school had these fox motocross gloves that had neoprene yellow white foam padding stitched over the knuckles of the black partial hand glove with exposed digits fingers

This was great cause we could just punch into the steel lockers and not hurt our hands 

Later in life I discovered WRIST guards for rollerblades with a very firm polystyrene or incredibly strong plastic risk guard plate from the palm to the wrist such that if you fell forward with these gloves on this sliding exposed hard plastic L shaped protector would allow you to slide forward and not skin your wrist hand palm down to the bone 

ROLLERBLADE WRIST GUARDS ACTUALLY ALLOW YOU TO SIMPLY DIVE FORWARD AND LAND ON THE PALMS OF YOUR HANDS AS YOU SLIDE FORWARD AS IF YOU ARE ICE-SKATING AND NO DAMAGE TO YOUR BODY

Because I spent a lifetime of crashing on bikes falling on asphalt getting road rash and pebbles of asphalt embedded into my flesh on all of my wrists knees elbows and body parts I recognize this as a fantastic life-saving invention 

BEST WAY TO GET PEBBLES OF GRIT ASPHALT STONE ROCK GLASS AND ROAD DEBRIS OUT OF YOUR KNEE ELBOW OR WRIST WHEN YOU'RE A BLOODY ROAD RASH MASS IS SIMPLY FIND THE NEAREST GARDEN HOSE AT A CHURCH OR BUSINESS OR EVEN A HOUSE IF YOU MUST AND BLAST THE CRAP OUT OF YOUR FLESH 

OBV the chlorine in tapwater acts a disinfectant as you dislodge foreign matter from your meat skeleton 

Cause you're already in pain you got nothing to lose 

Gen X grew up tough 

We were told to just walk it off  
For updates and info, contact scott at planttrees dot org.