The dorm ski trip: a perennial source of entertainment and dorm bonding.

This past weekend, I embarked on Casa Zapata’s Lake Tahoe trip with eager hopes of shredding the slopes on a snowboard.

One problem: I had never even seen a snowboard in real life. I had tried skateboarding in the past, but it was a bigger failure for me than Peyton Manning in the postseason.

What made my snowboarding dreams even more delusional was that the MLK weekend was the first time I had ever even touched actual snow. Ignoring my friends’ advice that I try skiing instead, I ambitiously purchased the lift ticket and rented the snowboarding equipment — including a helmet that I decided to grab at the last second.

Since I’m still saving to purchase a new Jason Schmidt jersey, I passed on the $75 lesson and thought I would learn through my own mistakes. I sailed down the beginner slope twice with my helmet before realizing that I really didn’t need the uncomfortable — and visibly unflattering — headgear.

I sailed on my third go-round, this time feeling the cool Tahoe air sweep across my scalp and seeing the beginners fall face-first into the chilly, white powder. I had picked up speed like never before, and for once I felt as though I actually owned some sort of athletic prowess.

The feeling quickly evaporated as the back of my board dug into the snow, hurling my body a few feet in the air.

Time stood still for the next three seconds.

Still completely in the air, I recognized my head was angled in the worst possible way — I would soon land on the back of my head with no means of protecting it. At that point, I had only two thoughts. One: why didn’t I ever talk to that cute girl from Italian class? Two: this concussion is going to suck.

I felt the back of my brain ram into my skull, and I lay motionless for the next two minutes. Though I couldn’t see much, I could hear several concerned voices asking if I was okay. I held my thumb up, indicating I was still alive.

I am extremely lucky the situation didn’t end up worse. I took some Tylenol that evening, and it was as if I had never crashed at all.

But I learned my lesson when it comes to snowboarding. After that one accident, I never let that helmet out of my sight. The blow to my head had left my sense of balance in a state of disarray for several hours, and I wasn’t about to risk losing something else — especially not my precious sense of humor.

It took a serious experience to get me to wear my helmet while snowboarding. And as I cruised to class this morning and saw a few minor bicycle near-misses, I started to wonder just what kind of situation it would take to get Stanford cyclists to start wearing helmets.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, bicycle helmets can reduce head injury risk by 85 percent. Additionally, one out of every eight bicycle-related injuries is a head injury.

Yet, still very few of us choose to wear a helmet while biking on campus. Not even I — a self-proclaimed advocate of the “better safe than sorry” mentality — use a helmet. After all, I don’t want to mess up my hair.

Stanford cyclists have gone to the emergency room with head injuries before (though admittedly rarely), and not even the bike ban in the arcades of the main quad will stop this occurrence.

It is scary to think what kind of serious accident must occur before a large, student-initiated push for helmet use comes into play. Concussions haven’t done it yet. I hate to think it possible, but perhaps permanent brain damage to a member of the Stanford community would be the only thing that could get us to think right.

Though it may make me five minutes late for each of my classes, I’ll walk from class to class in the meantime. Even if it means I get to see that girl in Italian class for five minutes less each day.

After all, I want to live long enough to try skiing on the Stanford Catholic Community’s Tahoe trip next month.

Andrew Lomeli is a sophomore. Email him at alomeli@stanford.edu.