Headgear

There appear to be two types of helmet on the market. Ones that make you look like and alien and ones that belong on a teenage skater dude. I'm some years past fitting the latter category even if I wanted to. I wasn't as if I was worried by the strange sideways glances I knew I'd get from other riders by not conforming so I set about finding an alternative to the design that has come to dominate the market but every time I spotted something that might fit the bill (if not my head) it appeared that it hadn't got past concept stage or even if it had, they weren't exactly widely available, at least not in any of my local bike shops. After all, don't you need to try a helmet on? Especially if you're planning on parting with a sizeable amount of cash and still risk looking like a buffoon. In the end, like the styling of my bikes and the rest of my cycle fashion choices, I looked to the halcyon days of cycling where the cap was king of headgear. But what about the hairnet? It appears fleetingly in archive footage and photos from the fifties onwards, or at least until someone came up with a lightweight construction which might also go some way towards saving your life. There weren't many available (surprise, surprise) but I managed to find this little 'new old stock' number on ebay. Then I spotted that some particularly fashion (and safety) conscious pros from the past had dabbled with a combination of the two! A fashion double whammy. Not exactly the protection afforded by modern helmet technology but very cool. Obviously,
one man's cool is another's lunacy and my chosen combination is certainly a head turner, likely for all the wrong reasons.

Listen, I'm not advocating everyone dispensing with helmets (actually, I am) but until someone comes up with an alternative that fits my exacting requirements, I'll be sticking with these. What's more, a collection of caps is a lot more affordable than a collection of helmets.