The Fall That Finally Got Me Into a Riding Helmet

The deer came out of the brush on the left side of the gravel road and Ranger went right. I went off sideways into the ditch grass. It was the middle of March, my coat was zipped to the collar, and that ditch grass was still flat and dead from winter, which is the only reason it was soft.

I bruised my left shoulder and my left hip. I did not hit my head. I have thought about that a lot since, because it was luck and not anything I did.

I had ridden in a felt cowboy hat since I was a girl. Helmets, in my head, were for people who showed, or for kids, or for somebody with better sense than me. I am sixty-one years old and I had never put one on.

Bonnie, who rides with me most Saturdays, did not soften it any. She said that could have been my head.

So the first week of April I sat at the kitchen table with my sewing tape measure, measured around my head the way the Troxel size chart says to, and ordered the Troxel Spirit Duratec. It came in a box on a Thursday and I rode in it that Saturday.

The first mile I was aware of it. By the second mile I was not. That is the whole review, really, but I will give you the rest of it anyway.

Seven months, about eighty rides, and the felt hat is still hanging on a nail where I left it.

It weighs 1.1 pounds. I have carried heavier coffee cups from the kitchen to the barn. Weight was never the reason I put off buying one, and it should not be the reason you do either.

What I did not expect was July. I get hot, and I figured a helmet would be a soup bowl on my head by the time I reached the first gate. It has vents across the top, and on a ninety degree Arkansas afternoon it was cooler than the felt hat ever was, because the felt hat had no vents at all and held every bit of heat I made.

The fit is adjustable, which mattered, because I measured myself with a sewing tape and got it roughly right rather than exactly right. There is a strap under the chin that took two hands and some patience the first week. I have not touched it since.

The outside is polycarbonate and the inside is expanded polystyrene, so it is a hard shell with a liner that gives. Full coverage, meaning it comes down over the back of my head, not a little cap perched on top.

What I do not love: it messes my hair worse than the hat did, and the first week the chin strap felt like a new pair of boots. Both of those stopped mattering by May. The felt hat has not been on my head since April.

I wipe the inside with a damp cloth every couple of weeks and it hangs on a hook in the tack room. In cold weather I wear a thin cotton skull cap under it, which is the only thing I have added. It carries a limited one year warranty and I have not had to use it.

About eighty rides now. Gravel roads, the Forest Service trails up behind the house, the monthly group ride I trailer Ranger to. It has been rained on, dropped in the trailer, and left sitting on a fence post while I ate lunch. Nothing has cracked, nothing has come loose, and the strap still holds where I set it in April.

Two of the women on that monthly ride asked about it in May, and I told them what I am telling you: measure your head, follow the chart, put it on. One of them ordered one. The other is still in a hat. I am not going to nag her.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you that I got away with it for fifty years and that does not mean a thing. The fall that changed my mind was not a big one. Ranger shied at a deer, I landed in soft grass, and Bonnie said one sentence I could not argue with. If you are waiting for a reason bigger than that, you may be waiting a long while.

I would also tell you not to make it complicated. Measure your head, follow the size chart, buy the thing. You do not need to be a competitor and you do not need to be young. You need to be on a horse, on a gravel road, in March, when a deer comes out of the brush. I am not a trainer and I am not telling anybody how to ride. I am telling you what I wish somebody had said to me at that table years ago.

I am not going to tell you the Troxel Spirit Duratec is the best helmet ever made, because I have only owned the one. I can tell you it fits, it stays put, it is cool enough in July, and it goes on my head every single ride now. That is all I was after.