As I rode to work on Saturday, a vulture took off from below the guard rail to my right as I pedaled steadily up the long north slope of Route 28. With heavy wing beats it gained altitude gradually. Thus, it remained close above and in front of me for what seemed like a very long time.
"Don't shit. Don't shit. Don't shit," I muttered as I held my own pace. It finally got up enough to bank away and climb above the trees.
Closer to town I saw a bedraggled bouquet of flowers, still in its plastic sleeve from the store. It had been lying there a while. I wondered if the purchaser had forgotten it on the roof of the vehicle, or if it was evidence that the love offering had been rebuffed.
As days shorten I have been using my lights during the last part of the evening run. I noticed that the standlight on my tail light had stopped working, so I ordered a new one of those. The standlight comes on when the bike slows below the speed at which the dynamo hub can produce enough juice to power the lights. These rigs used to involve bulky battery packs. Now they work off of a little capacitor inside the light itself. You wouldn't even know it's there. It's a crucial safety feature. The old light had seen eight hard years of use.
A customer talking to me about riding in traffic assumed that I always rode with a blinky tail light, day and night. I explained to him that I had stopped running it in daylight, because motorists seemed to have gotten numb to them. He observed that on bendy roads with alternating open areas and tree cover they were still useful to catch the eye of a driver going from glare into shade. That seemed like a really good point, so I have resumed flashing when I'm riding in a situation like that. Outside of that, though, the novelty seems to have worn off. And it creates another opportunity to blame the victim if someone does get hit and didn't have a blinky operating at the time. The same goes for please-don't-kill-me-yellow. We have to dress up like a clown piloting a UFO just to try to catch the attention of the zombies behind windshields.
Overall, drivers haven't been too bad. But you never know if you're experiencing a temporary, favorable anomaly or if it's really the beginning of a large scale trend of improvement.
3 comments:
I really can't imagine a substance worse than vulture shit. Urggh. That light that goes when dyno slows thingy sounds pretty cool! I'm back to no dynos, a powerful usb chargable front light and a old-style battery powered planet bike super flash on the back of my helmet, invoked with a press and a prayer when rolling. I miss my IGH in winter, but not that much...
I have the Superflash clipped to my bum bag, along with another blinky. I might turn my head, but I hope that my lower back will remain consistently in line with the direction of travel. The vehicular-looking light array, with large and steady front and rear lights, still seems to gain a trace of respect from passing motorists. And I love not having to worry about batteries.
We have to dress up like a clown piloting a UFO just to try to catch the attention of the zombies behind windshields.
This just about sums it up.
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