If you think riding a bike is slow...

 A transportation cyclist in an urban setting can often travel faster than a motor vehicle. Prudent riders have learned not to go absolutely as much faster as they possibly can, because the trapped audience would love to see you brought down in your arrogance, but even at a sedate pace a rider can thread the jam and take advantage of some shortcuts denied to the prisoners of car culture.

That advantage disappears when the commute gets longer, over open highway. During driving season, if I get lucky with traffic, I can get to work in a little over 20 minutes. If I get stuck behind an obstruction, it could be half an hour or longer. But on the bike these days it's solidly the better part of an hour inbound. Even at my best it was a big day when I made it in 50 to 55 minutes.  What is that in metric time?

Going slower than a motorist doesn't feel slow. I know I'm doing the best I can. A rider acclimates to the pace. You know how you feel, and how the bike feels, rolling over the terrain. I have written before about how the variations in my time on the bike are a much smaller percentage -- barring mechanical or medical crises -- than the variations I routinely encounter in a car. You get a rhythm and flow.

Following my successful ride in the rain and chill on a Sunday, I went out on the same route the next day, under similar but slightly less cold conditions. Eight miles out, I felt the unmistakable squish and waggle of a punctured rear tire. It went down gradually as I looked for a good place to pull well off the road to put in my spare tube.

Find a spot, dismount, remove the wheel, start to work the tire off... damn, this is a tighter fit than I remember. Put my gloves back on to enhance grip on the wet, gritty tire casing. Still not good enough. Try barehanding it again. Nope. Shit. Dig around for tools. All I could find was a 6mm hex key left over from when my seatpost clamp kept loosening up for some reason. Well, the tube was already punctured... I jammed it under the beads and pried. I tried to keep the tube out of the way, but it still made two more holes.

Once the tube was out I used the 30-year-old Silca frame pump to try to put enough air into it to locate the original puncture.

Tech tip: always put the tire label at the valve -- or vice versa -- so that you have a known reference point to help you zero in on where a sharp object might still be in the tire. I mean, feel around the whole casing, but it really speeds things along if you have a rough idea where you're looking.

Two problems frustrated me. Three, really. One, the tube had two significant holes from the hex key. Two, passing vehicles on the wet road made constant hissing noises. Three, I only had my distance glasses with me, so I couldn't see detail up close. And there was another problem I hadn't noticed yet.

Unable to narrow my search area, I felt around the entire casing with bare fingers until I felt the sharp end of a common culprit: a tiny, eyelash-size piece of wire. With wet fingers, I had to use my teeth to pull it out. I deposited it down the hollow center of a rotted fence post. Not as satisfying as dropping the little fucker into Mt. Doom, but then it was hardly as significant an artifact.

The spare tube had been in the pack with no valve cap. It had also been in contact with the rusty old hex key. It had only been in there since a flat I'd had back in April or May, but I worried that it might have chafed through where it vibrated against the metal objects. Oh well. Let's pump it up.

As often happens, the tire went back on somewhat more easily than it came off. I put the old Silca onto the valve and started pumping. I'd tried to put a few breaths into the tube before I stuck it into the casing and had been unable to round it out, but I'd gone ahead because I had no other option. Everything was wet, so even if I had a patch kit and had been able to locate holes in the tube, nothing would stick. I had one shot.

Nothing. The tire remained flaccid. Hissing vehicles paraded past. I hoped that someone I knew might happen by, but if they did they slipped past while I was looking down. I don't know that many people, and the odds of seeing one right there were slim on a day when normal people are at their jobs.

The good news was that my route home would only be seven miles. The bad news was that I had no choice but to walk, pushing the bike. I estimated my time in transit would be an hour and 45 minutes. Best get at it.

Crap like this is why I haven't ridden with cleated shoes in years. Once in a while I'll risk it for the fun of feeling full power, but with stiff-soled touring shoes and toestraps I do well enough.

Funny thing is, this was my second hike home in just a couple of months. On one of my last commutes of the season, I was coming down a fun descent on Route 28 on my way home in the gathering twilight, when passing cars herded me too far to the right. I went through a shoal of gravel that had been kicked out from Old 28, which was being repaved. Pow! Hisssssss. My rear tire, a Gravel King, had taken a terminal hit. Gravel's Bitch, more like.

I pulled off at the bottom of the dip, where I could get well off the road, the usual precautions. In that instance, the spare tube was just plain rotten, because literally years had passed since I had a flat on that bike. With no one at home but a couple of cats, and no one I cared to call, I started trudging. That one was only about 4 miles and change. I put all the bike lights on as night settled on the landscape.

Elm Street is hilly, curvy, and narrow. I veered off into the weeds numerous times on that plod. Finally, when I was a quarter-mile from home, someone in a pickup truck stopped to ask if I needed a ride. Just about the bendiest, narrowest bit lay between me and the relatively wider Green Mountain Road, and I could see the lights of a lot of vehicles slaloming through those bends, so I took him up on it. When I told him where to turn in, he said, "Well, that wasn't much!" I assured him that after my long day at work, a cumulative 26 miles of riding, and a somewhat anxious trudge in my fatigue and hunger for supper it was still welcome, but I got the feeling he thought I was a wimp.

With that in mind, I set very strict limits on the type of aid I would accept this time. I generally do not like to burden anyone with the unfortunate consequences of my stupid decisions.  I wish I could say that was a lifelong habit, but in my adolescence and young adulthood I definitely burdened people with my stupid decisions.

At least the dry slot that I'd seen on the weather radar when I prepared to ride that morning was still holding, although a hypothermic downpour would have put the chef's kiss on the whole fiasco.

After only about a mile, a driver did pull up, in a large gray SUV -- not a windowless white van with a mysteriously stained mattress in the back -- and asked if I need a pump. I assumed tire pump... I reported that both my available tubes were NFG, but thanks. He then offered a lift, but I was just settling into a good swamp of penitent meditation. I thanked him again and excused him. I just wasn't in the mood to make a new friend. Or to drag some stranger 12 miles out of their way, because he had been driving the other way when he looped around to check on me. Was it a lovely gesture of generosity, or did I narrowly escape ending up cut up into several garbage bags distributed across 50 square miles of Maine? Either one is possible.

As I walked, I thought about how the bike manufacturers of the 1880s and '90s found a surprising customer base among working people who scraped up the coin to buy what was at the time an expensive item. From the point of view of someone who had to walk everywhere, the bicycle was a miracle. Sometimes when I ride I think about how I'm flying along above the ground, the "stride" of a pedal stroke multiplied by the gear ratio and laid out on the road by the circumference of the tire according to the result. Steps become circles feeding bigger circles, devouring distance. Even on the fixed gear, where I'm unable to coast, I get to rest on the stretches where the bike drives me. The magic of the gear ratio still works. Until it doesn't, because the cushion of air fails. Fsst!

Looking at the bike computer as I pushed along, I could see that I averaged either side of four miles per hour, usually slightly below. On easy downgrades I could lope along at five-plus. Pushing a bike turns into work really quickly. I considered burying it in the woods somewhere and loping home a little faster, but in the shoes I was wearing it wouldn't have been that much faster. And I would have had to drive back out to retrieve the bike. Keep walking.

No one else even slowed down to look at me for the rest of the seven miles. That's cool. I wasn't looking at them, either. I was just experiencing these roads at this laborious pace and comparing it to the slowest I'd ever felt when riding it. Even when I was "almost there," I had to take every single step to get there. I got my 10,000, I can tell you. Actually the phone says 15,333.

Once I got cleaned up and fed, I put the bike in the work stand to put in a good tube. While I was at it, I checked out the ancient Silca and discovered that the dried out rubber grommet in the pump head didn't come close to sealing on the valve stem. So a tire pump would have gotten me going after all. Of course if what he had was one of those Schrader-only electric compressors I still would've been screwed, because I didn't have a Presta adapter.

The next day, in dry weather, I set out with a significantly beefed-up tool kit and the Lezyne pump off my road bike. All went well, but I assume nothing. Changing a flat in the rain or in a snowbank is still a pain in the ass. We won't see snowbanks for a while, but rain, sleet, and assorted semi-frozen splather are traditional elements of November's repertoire.

You go to ride on the day you have

Only an idiot would go for a bike ride in November rain mixing with snow, with a temperature barely above freezing. So let me tell you what I wore...

Cold weather riding depends on moisture management even in dry conditions. Your body puts it out constantly. Exertion makes you sweat even if the air is cold.

Any outdoor adventurer is advised to wear fabrics that are "warm when wet and fast drying." These fabrics are not as warm when wet as they are when dry. If you expect to get wet, add layers to slow the rate of heat loss through the wet fabric.

Quick review: you lose heat through conduction, convection, evaporation, and radiation. Conduction occurs when you put your warm self in contact with a cold substance -- water, for instance. Or ice. Or cold rocks. Convection is just a fancy word for the wind blowing across you. It could be an annoying cold draft inside your house or a winter gale on a treeless mountain. Or it could be the constant self-created breeze as you pedal through the chilly atmosphere. Evaporation is how your sweat keeps you cool in summer heat, or tries to. It's the body's response to rising internal temperature, so you will perspire when you exert even when you wish you wouldn't. And then radiation is just your precious heat beaming away from you in all directions.

Cold weather cycling is just about the hardest activity to dress for. You can block the wind or mitigate its effect with either shell clothing or more insulating fuzzy layers without a shell. I used to use the second option until I got a particular yellow Sugoi wind jacket that hit the perfect balance of wind blocking and breathability. I wanted something that gave better visibility than my former dark layers, without the full panic mode of hi-viz please-don't-kill-me-yellow. When it was brand new it even repelled water pretty well, but that always fails early in a garment's life. I have never been able to reestablish it in any shell garment, with wash-in or spray-on treatments. But it cuts the wind whether it's wet or not.

For the legs, I used to wear various layering combinations of wool tights with long underwear under and/or wool leg warmers over, with bike shorts as the innermost layer. For sub-freezing temperatures, I would add wind briefs over the shorts. Then I got Sport Hill 3SP fabric XC Pants. They are incredibly effective at blocking wind, while remaining completely breathable. Made of polypropylene, they transport moisture to the surface, where it forms droplets or frost that can be brushed away. So for most cool to mild cold conditions it's bike shorts and 3SP pants. But actual rain adds a factor. Under those conditions I need to turn the outfit into a wetsuit. So I put my lightest polyester riding tights under them.

For the shirt layers, a standard crew neck poly shirt is first.

Followed by a classic wool jersey.

And then a heavyweight (actually pretty light, just thicker) old Craft zip-t

Because the core is critical, I always put a wind vest in the system. Again, Craft. This one with a solid rather than mesh back. The chest pocket is just big enough for my phone.

I led with the shell jacket. No need to repeat. In case I had to stop for a mechanical or other unscheduled delay, I stuffed a Craft warmup jacket with Gore Windstopper panels on the front of it into the rack pack.

Feet just hang down there in the cold wind. For cool rides, I put cut off ends of bread bags over the front of my socks for toe warmers. When the temperature drops to freezing and below, I go to liner socks with full bread bags over them.

If the air is cold and dry, another set of bags goes over the medium-weight wool socks I put over the liners. For wet weather, I put the bags on the outside, over the shoes. Wet shoes take days to dry out. I don't want to ride in wet shoes or go days without a ride while I wait for them to dry. The bags provide better coverage than any of the official cycling shoe covers I've ever had, and I collect tons of bread bags from buying my weekly groceries.

For the challenge of near-freezing wetness I wore these North Face Apex gloves. They are the most wind-blocking gloves I have owned (so far). Not my absolute favorites, because the gauntlet is too tight to pull easily over the jacket sleeve, but top-level protection from cold wind once you've wrestled them into place.

Under the helmet: this old liner from when our shop sold hockey stuff. It's just a simple beanie that pairs nicely with the Cat Ears ear covers on the helmet itself. For really cold rides I use a thin poly balaclava, but usually do not have it pulled down to cover my face. For whatever reason, I have not had problems with frozen face. Maybe it's because I try to do more hiking and skiing than riding when winter is in full force.

Helmet gets taped up over the front vents, leaving the rear vents clear. The headlamp serves as dashboard lighting if I ride at night.

The final accessory is the windshield wiper, a scrap of bandanna for wiping my glasses.

The cold and wet bike: a fixed gear with full fenders. It will keep you warm.

After all that preparation to endure character-building suffering, the rain let up enough that I only had a bit of a chill on the front of my arms once the fabric was thoroughly wet. Seriously nothing debilitating. I looked forward to riding the next day in a similarly wet forecast, but warmer, so without the snowflakes mixing in.

Driving Season

 The vast majority of the time, when I arrive at work by car I'm in a bad mood. It's a rare morning when I haven't been held up by someone oozing along in front of me, often exacerbated by some flame-brain six inches behind me, as if I could somehow get the obvious car or truck in front of both of us to go any faster or get out of the way.

I've written before about how the drivers who ooze along the highway then race into town like they're strafing infantry columns or something. The metaphor I used was attacking the Death Star. Sociopathic in any case. Or someone I finally managed to pass comes flying in behind me, probably gloating about how I didn't get very far, because I don't like to drive that way in the tight confines of streets with pedestrians, random pets, and other drivers compressed into them.

One diversion amuses me once I get into town. It's called Lid Game. It's very simple: try to bypass or straddle every access lid or storm drain. It started when the road was in worse shape, so these features were more prominent, and I drove a car with lower ground clearance and worse suspension. It's become a habit now, a minor challenge and diversion. I thought I was the only idiot entertained by it, but then I saw another driver playing it down in New Jersey when I was on a road trip. It will never be as popular as pickleball, but I appreciate seeing another player anyway.

When I'm on the bike, drivers might kill me, but they don't slow me down. I slow down in town traffic because it's better than sprinting through every gap, hoping nothing goes wrong. That may feel like a flex, but no one is impressed, and most of them just think you're a jerk. I try to inspire more curiosity and whatever respect a habitual motorist might summon for some bonehead who doesn't have the sense to drive. Keep up. Move smoothly. Maneuver predictably.

Over the years I tried various ways to keep doing at least some of the commute by bike. They end up taking as much time, or more, than just riding the whole route, and don't save any car mileage. In Annapolis, Maryland, a network of streets provided alternatives, and the terrain was pretty uniform. Driving was always the worse option in the colonial era roads and streets there. Here in rural New Hampshire, alternate routes diverge widely from the direct route.

Your friend up in the sky

 Fully into glare season now, our definition of a good riding day changes from our hopes for spring and summer.

In short: your best friend when the sun slants in from the south (or north in that other hemisphere) is a high, dry overcast.

I do love the late autumn and winter sun, but not when I'm sharing the road with motor vehicles. I don't like it when I'm trying to ride a trail with it blinding me and casting deep shadows among the rocks and folds of a challenging off-road course either, but I really don't do that anymore. I would rather enjoy the stabbing glare from a beach or a mountaintop, on foot. Either that or a nice window letting that brilliance and warmth slant across the cup of coffee and some baked treat on the table beside me.

If your schedule allows it, ride your glare season rides during what passes for the middle of the day. The sun will still come in low, but not as low. A cloudy day will expand your safer window by blocking the direct blaze. I have nearly hit pedestrians several times when riding in glare. Blinded drivers are even more likely to hook a turn in front of you when they can't see you at all, as opposed to simply ignoring you.

You can dress for most weather, including a cold autumn rain. Build yourself a fixed gear for those crappy days when you don't want to expose your good bike and its many moving parts to the water and grit. Riding fixed also keeps your legs moving, which is great for generating warmth and developing a very smooth, efficient pedal stroke. It limits your speed on the downhills and makes you exert as the cranks force your feet around. You might resist the pedaling force or simply try to keep up.

Purists consider a brake to be cheating. They can kiss my ass. Slap a front brake on there to help you out when you need it. And fenders. There's no great virtue in slathering yourself with grime while a cold, wet spray saturates you from below as well as above.

Outdoor riding is always more fun than abusing yourself and your bike on a trainer. Cold weather riding is the hardest activity to dress for, but it's worth the trouble just to get out there and log some actual miles. You will redefine "comfort," but at your worst you will still not be as grody as Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Johansen were after more than a year in the same underwear. So get out there.

More e-bike support shenanigans

 You're pedaling along on your e-bike, going to work or coming home, when the pedal assistance just quits. Now you have to power that tank with only your tired legs.

A customer of ours had this happen, along with the plug connection between the handlebar display and the rest of the wiring harness spontaneously disconnecting, and the display unit failing to recognize a charged battery. He bought the bike in April of this year. He's a restaurant worker who has commuted by bike for years.

In simpler times, back last century, bike companies typically offered a lifetime warranty on their (mostly steel) frames, and a year on the parts. The mountain bike era ended that, as more riders beat on their bikes, destroying them rapidly, and the industry moved into aluminum and carbon fiber. Also, with suspension parts like shocks and forks provided by third party companies, the company whose name is on the bike will always hand you off to the suspension manufacturer for warranty through them.

Now, with smokeless mopeds the dominant form of two-wheeled, semi-human-powered vehicle, bike and moped companies fall back on the warranty offered by the specific electric component suppliers as well. This is true whether they are legacy bike companies or a new, moped-only company.

Investigating our customer's options, I read in the booklet provided with his owner's manual that Bafang warrants the motors they make for 30 months, and the other components like controllers for 18 months from the date they leave Bafang's factory. Who knows how long the interval is between that date and the date the bike was assembled, let alone sold to the customer. What a sleazy move. It puts them behind two firewalls: the bike manufacturer's own warranty obstacle course, plus the record keeping between the bike company and Bafang regarding OEM parts deliveries. The consumer's clock starts running out long before they even know they're going to buy the bike.

Fuji customer service initially quoted us a price for replacement, then redirected me to their third-party warranty page when I asked about that. Bafang isn't even listed anymore. When I explained what I had found in the manual from Bafang, the Fuji warranty rep immediately said that they would send the part no charge. So that's nice.

My life, my fortune, and what shreds of honor I possess

 It's No Kings Day 2.0 today. I had planned to trot down the street on my lunch break, like I did during the  summer edition, but we had at least one more person working here that day, and my wife was attending. The whole town was busier, because it's a summer resort.

I will guarantee that my employer thinks that the little gathering up there at Pickering Corner is silly and pointless. It's just the local hippies playing in imitation of the (hopefully) huge rallies in major cities. Like most conservatives, he wouldn't stick his neck out for anything when he can just vote for hatchet men to chop the necks that other people have stuck out on behalf of the disadvantaged. It's conservative gospel that there are no such people as the disadvantaged, only the lazy. Don't have money? They're always looking for ditch diggers. You should have gone to trade school. Lots of jobs out there. This might not reflect his personal thinking, but it's the broth in which he has simmered for his entire life.

I'm pretty cynical. I could easily rationalize skipping public protest entirely. Such spectacles do turn off some people, even as they inspire others. Nothing in the world inspires a unanimous response, positive or negative. The only time numbers really count is on election day. We've all seen how that turns out. Everything else is just recruiting.

Having built my life around ideals that have definitely cost me thousands of dollars in income never sought, that covers my sacrifice of life and fortune. As an occasional -- and in a certain phase more than occasional -- scumbag, I can't claim much in the way of honor, but my life is driven by ideals, nonetheless. However, if I cut out now, I don't just take a pay cut for myself, I impact my employer's fortune against his own priorities. If he lost business because of my idealistic choice that would be on me for assigning him as collateral damage for the sake of my gesture. It's a matter of consent.

I hope that the action around the country lives up to the hopes of the promoters in the weeks leading up to it. They set a high bar, calling it the biggest single day of protest in US history before it even happened. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a crashing disappointment like the 2024 election was.

As I look out the shop windows I get no sense of abnormality. There aren't a lot of people around since the foliage is past peak. The beer joint beloved of the local mountain bike crowd scheduled a booze cruise on the M/S Mount Washington conflicting with the pro-democracy protest. They obviously consider saving democracy to be an eccentric hobby for a few mostly older people who don't ride with them anyway. The few shoppers who drift through here also reflect no political urgency. It's just a sunny October Saturday.

I did see a few people with signs walking toward the protest venue just before noon. They were already headed back this way not long after 1:00 p.m. I didn't get a chance to step out and even look that way to see whether the center of town was particularly busy. Road traffic isn't. As public visibility goes, Wolfeboro's crowd will barely show up. It's still worth doing, and I'm glad that someone did.

The day isn't over yet. Things could get ugly where opposition is more energetic. Around here, most of the conservatives have learned to just ignore the hippies and keep outvoting them. If you want to understand why so many Democrats keep disappointing their most progressive party members and allies, live in a place like New Hampshire for a while and see what it takes to get elected at all. The messaging -- the education -- has to start a lot earlier and run a lot deeper than just campaign ads to voting age adults. And the information needs to be as factual as predictive philosophy can be. Conservatives hate to experiment. A group can only march as fast as its slowest member if they're going to arrive together. A time trial team hasn't finished until every rider has crossed the line.

Early comes late, late comes early, and the middle disappears

 Autumn is here. All through August we were warned, but could put off recognition. September makes it stick. The sun rises later, sets sooner, and slants in lower. The light goes from morning to afternoon with no long bask in noonday sun.

Very soon, dusk will fall too early for me to complete my full commute safely. Route shortening options all have drawbacks. I could start at the parking lot for Ocean State Job Lot ("The Blot"), but that only gets me a little over three miles. I save a little time, but loading and unloading the bike eats several minutes, nearly eliminating any time I saved by traveling at car speed rather than bike speed for those few miles. That leaves me with about 11 miles each way. Not bad for a week or two, before the darkness closes in while I'm still on Route 28. The highway isn't as bad as Elm Street, because there's a bit of a shoulder and  sight lines are better. But people get dopey in the fall twilight. It's a lot harder to judge peripheral clearance in the darkness, so even a well-lighted cyclist is more at risk, especially if a driver is half lit.

Any options that involve parking closer to town also include driving extra distance off of the direct line to get to them. Now I'm really not saving much gas or wear and tear on the car at all. Most of these options require driving on dirt roads that might be rough. All of them require left turns off of the highway in the morning, with impatient drivers behind me and coming toward me. I might get a quick, clean left turn or I might be hanging there, all tensed up, waiting for a gap so I can clear the pipeline. I know that other drivers are supposed to be responsible and alert, but I hate to depend on them.

Most of the parking options in the woods along the way are awkward in some way. I have arranged parking at the driveways of friends and acquaintances, but it was always a little weird. There's a little parking area at Bryant Road and the Cotton Valley Trail, but particularly since the pandemic it's more heavily used. I might find no space or only a tight squeeze, when I'm on a tight schedule. And I burned out on the trail about that time, too. Tired of getting the stink eye and passive aggressive overtures from pedestrians and dog walkers who insist on more groveling than I'm inclined to do. I'd rather be out on the road where people are just trying to kill me, but it's less personal. So I was taking trail parking, but then riding on the road. I felt guilty about that, on top of the time, hassle, and extra driving involved. It isn't transportation cycling anymore when it doesn't reduce car use.

I feel some fear as the darkness closes in, not for myself when riding so much as for what I will find when I try to get back into full-time riding next spring. Age takes its toll whether you're paying attention or not. It progresses gradually for a couple of decades in which you can grumble about being in your forties or fifties. You know you're losing a little bit all the time. But then you hit a point where you're losing noticeable amounts as soon as you let up. You can't take a few weeks off and hop back in. You need to find ways to stay consistently active, and even then you will need to feel your way back in to see where the new limits have been set. My average speed has been fairly consistent for a couple of years, but a wee bit slower each year, and definitely taking more out of me. "Peak form" is not a summit anymore, it's just a shallower hole.

Your riding area may differ. When I lived in Maryland, I was able to use the bike year-round with only a day here or there when snow or ice made the riding a foolish and selfish indulgence. I had the best lights I could get, which were a feeble glow compared to the lights of today, but even the motor vehicles had dimmer lights, so it averaged out. Also, I rode on city streets much of the time, so the municipal lighting illuminated the general area. When I lived outside the city for a while, the commute traversed a few miles of darker highway, but it worked out. I was younger, the terrain was much easier, and the winters were mild.

There were also about 100 million fewer people in the country overall. Much of the population growth has been concentrated in the eastern megalopolis. I lived in it then, but north of it now. Maryland's population has grown by roughly two million since I settled there after college in 1979. Most of its growth occurred after I left. By comparison, New Hampshire's population has only grown by about 350,000 people since I arrived. On some days it feels like all of them are on my route, smokin' dope and texting, but I know that's an illusion. For the most part, smoking or not, they pass without incident. Back in Maryland I was on the receiving end of honks, swerves, spitting, thrown objects, profanity... all the stuff of a crowded society. It was only the 1970s and early '80s, so weapons were not discharged, and only very rarely shown. Mostly the drivers just used the car or truck itself to express themselves. It happens here as well, but much less often in my immediate area. I hear bad stories from not far away. It only takes one to ruin or end your life, but that's part of how we conduct ourselves on the road in any vehicle.

I have noted that more people seem to give way to their hostility under the cover of darkness. I have also noted, and continue to note, that the self-centered lighting on motor vehicles puts forth a blaze of light for the operator to see down hundreds of feet of darkened roadway, but that same blinding glare is aimed at oncoming vehicles with their own blinding glare, so that no one can see. Stick a cyclist into that, even with the best lights you can mount, and we're all lucky if we get through it without someone getting tagged. Cyclists have their own aggressive lighting, which can do more harm than good if they're not aimed carefully. No point blinding a driver if you actually want them to maneuver safely past you.

Headlights on motor vehicles have gotten weird in general with the high-intensity LEDs that supposedly project plenty of usable light while also forming weird shapes unlike any headlights of the ancient past. Navigation lights on ships and planes are meant to provide instant recognition of size and direction of travel. Lights on road vehicles should be no different, given how we're expected to travel at high speeds in tight formations. We're either operating close to another lane or two full of other speeding vehicles or in a single lane, perhaps with bicyclists and moped riders alongside. We have to make quick, accurate decisions. People drive too fast. Some people drive erratically.

Bike lighting can't equal the options available to boxier vehicles with four or more wheels to define the shape of them. Look at tractor-trailer rigs and even smaller trucks. They have lights all over them that define their shape. Passenger vehicles, even the super modern ones with weird lights, still conform to a general headlight/tail light/parking light configuration. Motorcycles and bicycles just don't have enough surface area to offer a large and definitive array.

Mere brightness is not a virtue. Motorcycles with super bright headlights are actually hurting themselves by blinding motorists. No one needs to see you from half a mile away. They need to see you from a few yards away, and be able to see the clear path to avoid you. This is true whether you have a motor or not. Visibility from further away helps somewhat to allow the driver of a larger vehicle to plan ahead, but not if it's so blinding that the driver loses the line when it matters the most.

Motorcycles with dual headlights run a risk of an oncoming or crossing driver estimating their size and distance wrong, seeing them as a larger vehicle, farther away. And super loud pipes just make people want to kill you. Factor that into your safety calculation.

When the commute ends I have to fit riding into the days when I'm not working, or into the margins of the days when I do. Because the sun comes up later, and motorists are going to work in the mornings, a dawn patrol training ride carries many of the same stresses as a commute, while providing none of the economic benefits. It's easy enough to suit up and get on the bike, but maybe not the best use of the time, since other forms of exercise provide more benefits in overall fitness and bone density. I get a lot more core and upper body exercise when I'm not hurrying out in the morning to make the bike ride to work and arriving home already fried from the ride at that end of the day. The rider is part of the machine. It -- you -- need maintenance just as much.