I second the helmet.I used to work with a guy up in Warsaw who somehow could afford a new Yamaha R-1 but not a helmet to go with it. TB and offered him one of ours (we had plenty) but he declined.
We used to take our telescopes to the dark sky preserve up there and go observing together, which is where he told us about his encounters with whitetail deer while on the bike. He said you could see their eyes up in the woods off to the sides of the road.
It wasn’t a week later we heard he had struck a deer while riding and was brought by helicopter to a local hospital. He was brain dead and they kept him alive long enough to harvest his organs for donation. A very sad story, he was a really cool dude and a hell of a machinist.
Wear your helmets, folks.