Helmet Hair – Conquered

Helmet Hair. The dreaded look of helmet hair has plagued mountain bikers as long as mountain bikers have had hair and helmets to wear on their aforementioned hair. After much research, though, I have found a cure and the cure might be much simpler than you think. But first off, we must understand the misnomer that is helmet hair.

Many people believe that helmet hair is a result of wearing a helmet on your head while mountain biking. They believe that when you mash that helmet onto your head and strap it below your chin, your hair conforms to the shape of the helmet and the result is helmet hair. This however, is totally false.

Helmet hair is not a result of your hair conforming to your helmet and sticking out through the air vents. Rather, and this can get a little complicated for smaller minded folk, helmet hair is a natural result of flying on your bike. You know those times when you’re riding on your mountain bike and you’re going so fast that you feel like you’re flying, well, you are actually flying… at least certain parts of you are flying. Those parts happen to be the lightest parts of your body, which as you probably have already guessed, is your hair.

Now you may be asking yourself: I don’t think I’m flying… am I? But the pertinent question you should be pondering is: why are only certain hairs flying while others hairs aren’t? And why do those certain hairs that are flying correspond to the air vents in my helmet? The answer to these two questions is actually very simple: certain hairs are grammatically lighter than other hairs. Yup, by grams. Hairs are supposed to be the lightest parts of your body (not cells, as some insane people incorrectly believe) but certain hairs are lighter or heavier depending on where they grow out of your head (and nostrils, ear canals… for that matter). We’ve also discovered, in the mtnbikeriders.com lavatory, that the lighter hairs actually correspond directly to the air vents on your particular helmet. Weird, huh?

Go fast and your flying, go slow and no helmet hair… choices, choices

What is even weirder is that when you go from one helmet to another helmet with different vents, the original lighter hairs actually gain weight and the hairs, where the new helmet’s vents are, lose weight so that they can join in the flying. WEIRD!

Now that we totally understand that helmet hair is not a result of wearing helmets but rather a result of hairs flying, we can begin to work on relieving ourselves of helmet hair. There are two main tactics for getting rid of the dreaded helmet hair. Tactic one is pretty obvious to everyone: shave off all your hair. Yes this is a drastic step but it is also quite effective, 100% effective, actually. This is highly recommended if you happen to also be going bald. I mean, why not just get rid of it all since Mother Nature is doing that for you anyway?

A second tactic and one that is infinitely more beautiful in its execution and result is quite simple: go slow. Go slow? That’s it? Yes, that’s it. You see when you go slow you never gain enough speed to go fast and if you’re not going fast, then you’re not going to be flying. And if your hair is not flying, then you will not have helmet hair. Yup. Simple, reasonable tactics for ridding ourselves of the unwanted helmet hair. That’s what we deliver here at mtnbikeriders.com lavatory.

Now go ride but remember: go slow.