On Thursday I did my weekly
bike ride, after work. Thanks to evil clock-people, it’s dark by the
time I get home from work. (I would happily drive to work in the dark to
get at least some daylight after work.) Sure, it’s not as safe as riding
in daylight, but I don’t think the risk is all that high. I started out
feeling great, enjoying just a little tailwind. Riding in the dark has
its own special appeal. Your limited vision brings you into a world
consisting of you, your bike, wind, and 30 yards of ever-changing road.
In Summerland I hadn’t quite made my mileage goal yet, so I spun my way up Ortega Hill and turned around there. It still looked like I was going to be short, so I took a parallel road that’s a little bit longer. It was also a lot darker. So far I’d ridden on a road that’s pretty much adjacent to the freeway and gets a lot of its light. This road had several stretches where there were no lights at all. Literally all I could see was the pretty small circle of road illuminated by my headlight. Kind of like riding your bike, but only being allowed to look through a cardboard tube pointed maybe 20 feet ahead. That small patch wasn’t enough to tell me whether the road is turning, so I stayed well towards the middle of the road. I turned my light a little bit to the left so I could see and follow the center line.
About half way through this I discovered that I could see a lot more if I put my hand on my headlight. It’s a Cateye with 5 LEDs in it, and a semi-translucent case. Quite a bit of light shone through the case into my eyes, which greatly reduced my eyes’ light sensitivity. Blocking it out really helped. When I got home I used some electrical tape to make the front more opaque. That stretch of just a couple of miles on a really dark road was probably the highlight of the ride. I slowed down a bit, for fear of hitting something, but the feeling of riding alone through the night is highly recommended.