Life Lessons

I learnt a few things yesterday. Firstly, there isn't a lot of point trying to clean a bike outside on a wet, windy, wintery day. It just makes for an exercise in frustration. Secondly, doing anything under a fruit laden orange tree on a wet, windy wintery day is a bad idea. It turns out that oranges are surprisingly heavy when dropped from a tree.

Despite the wet evening yesterday, this morning it was fairly dry and even the roads had dried out quite a bit, so that was nice. It made for a nice ride this morning. Although I had that unpleasant experience that happens sometimes of feeling like you have a headwind in both directions. But that was only for part of the ride, so it wasn't to bad.

I have been noticing on some of my rides more recently people riding with solid red tail lights, as opposed to flashing lights. It has struck me as strange since I was always told that flashing lights made you easier to see. Flashing also makes the battery last a lot longer, but in this day and age of easily rechargeable lights, I don't see that being an issue any more. Anyway it puzzled me enough to head to Professor Google to ask the question. Whilst trying to not get too caught up in the bottomless pit that is online forums, it did teach me a few things. It seems that the common consensus is that a flashing light is easier to see, since it draws attention to you, but a solid light is easier for a driver to judge in terms of distance. So there is a case for both. I think on a busy road flashing would be better, since I think a solid red light might get lost amongst the other solid red lights on the road. But other than that, I guess both approaches have merit. I have seen people with two red tail lights, one flashing and one solid and that makes more sense to me now. Failing getting a second light though, I think I will stick with flashing for the immediate future.

On an unrelated note, hooray for the winter solstice, which was last Friday. We are now over the hump and the days will continue to get longer from this point on. The days of riding and running in the dark will soon be behind me. Today there will be officially 6 seconds more sunlight than last Friday. By tomorrow it will be 8 seconds. Better break out the sunscreen.