Oct. 21, 2007, is a date Adam Kahler will never forget.

Kahler, 23, was riding a his bicycle along Route 405 near Milton that Sunday afternoon.

"All of a sudden I saw the sky," he recalled. "Next thing I knew, I was crumpled in a heap along the road."

Kahler, of Millmont, and a 2003 graduate of Mifflinburg High School, was riding with two members of the Bucknell University cycling team. He'd been riding on the outside, and he was struck by a car driven by an 82-year-old woman. He bounced off the windshield of the car, striking his head on the roof before tumbling to the pavement.

"I realized pretty quickly I wasn't in good shape," he continued. "I had a dislocated shoulder and my knees looked like hamburger."

An ambulance arrived quickly, and it took just one look at his injuries for the EMTs to call in a helicopter.

One of his friends later told him his spine was visible through a laceration in his back.

"If I wasn't wearing my helmet, I'd be dead by now," he declared. He still has the battered helmet, a souvenir of the incident and a reminder. The back of the helmet is gone, he said, and it's still stained with his blood.

"I wasn't going to wear my helmet that day," he said. "It was in my car, and I went back and picked it up. I'm glad I did. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't wearing it."

He remembers being lifted into the helicopter, his first ride ever in a chopper.

"I asked the EMT if he could hold a mirror so I could see where we were going," he said. "He didn't think that was funny."

Kahler spent five days at Geisinger Medical Center, and he was in bed for a month before he could go outside. In addition to the cuts and bruises, he sustained two broken vertebrae in his neck. He underwent surgery on his damaged shoulder. He had to wear a neck brace, and he was unable to return to work for three months.

Now living in Bakersfield, Calif., Kahler still rides his bicycle almost daily. He always wears his helmet.

"There's no excuse not to," he said.