Every couple of weeks, I suddenly get concerned about injury. The idea that rose out of my latest bout may possibly be useful to other people, so I thought I'd share it.

There are already thousands of first aid kits here on instructables, so what's special about mine? Well, it's for biking, both human and bike.

So what are the risks while biking? The two obvious ones are:

Falling Off resulting in injury
Bike breaking down

Probably 90% of the time, falling off results in nothing other than a coupe of scapes and bruises. Occasionally you get cuts, and even more occasionally, sprains. Broken bones are rare enough that most first aid kits (like mine won't bother to account for them.

And what goes wrong with bikes? Well, my one gets a puncture a couple times a year.

Can we create a small little kit that can deal with all of this?

Step 1: The Donor

Puncture repair kits are neat little things. The breed you get here comes in little containers 8cm by 5cm (~3"x2"). Inside them they contain a tube or rubber cement, some patches, and a scratcher to roughen the surface of the tire.

The container it comes in also contains a lot of air. What can we replace this with?

Step 2: The Implant

As I said before, the injuries you're most likely to find are scrapes, bruises and sprains. What dod we need to deal with these?

Well, I decided to pick some plaster strip and some gauze. The gause (coupled with safety pins) can be used for compression of sprains. Whilst not the best first aid in the world, it'll help you mobilize the sprain, and be abe to bike slowly back along the trail.

If I had a nice little bottle, I'd consider adding some dettol (a disenfectant)

So in the end, the human side is:

- bandaid

- gauze

- 2x safety pins

- scissors

Step 3: The Surgery

Time to see if we can get this all to fit inside the box. In goes the bandage, scissors and gause.

Then the patches, scratcher and rubber glue.

Shut the lid and hope...

Step 4: Post Surgery

And after a traumatic experience, the human and bike puncture repair kit rejoins it's buddies, the pump, multitool and chainbreaker. Most trips I just take the pump and puncture kit. The chain-breaker if I'm going off-road (Yes, I have needed it a few times), and generally the multitool is somewhere in a nearby pocket anyway.

As for the human side, I have an excellent inbuilt repair system to compliment the small first aid kit presented here.

Things to think about:

Don't just pack plaster and gauze, think about how to use them (put the safety pins in too!)
If you have a moderate or serious accident (ie sprains or break), try a cellphone first, before you potentially cause damage by trekking it out.
Being prepared is good

Finally, a disclaimer:

Carrying a first aid kit does not stop you being an idiot (though having one implies you are slightly less of one). Neither can I.