Helmet-head is hot

We're young and able-bodied. We cycle to work, class, and often to the neighborhood cafe. We love that the Davis, Cal. decorative flags bear a bicycle in lieu of stars. We've got one nagging worry in the bicycle department: a dear friend doesn't use proper skull+brain protection. Gaah. Reminding the invincible that even careful riders can expect to crash every 4,500 miles does not help much. Surprising the subject by near-simulation, intentionally swerving our car too close to the bianchi and beloved, isn't effective either.

What to do? Romance the helmet. Remember the live short Manon sur le bitume? The film is a sequence many of us have imagined: what happens if we die in a bicycle crash, i.e., our flashbacks and our family and close friends' scenes of sadness. It borders on touchingly trite but its springtime setting and its soundtrack of Madeleine Peyroux's cover of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" are somewhat redemptive. Throw that film together with the friend, a baguette, madly-bought Roquefort and bargain Bordeaux. During viewing, muse aloud to self that narrating twenty-something main character and bicyclist Manon is missing her helmet at time of crash. Then cheerfully toast to a Long Life.