Not today's ride, but I thought I'd share some thoughts on riding home a couple of nights ago - as the darkness drew in and enveloped me. Only about a 6-8KM ride to home from where I was, but that was plenty.
I have a headlight, but not a taillight. So, I decided to turn on my headlight, as it got dark. My first thought was, "Wow, this is brilliant!" My new light is excellent, it's a Light & Motion Urban500, for those of you interested.
And it is indeed excellent. It allowed me a great field of vision running on the highest setting of 500 lumens for a while. Then, a raccoon scared the crap out of me. Just appeared from the ditch on the left side of the road, and then ran away as I approached. Next, it was a porcupine's turn to appear from seemingly nowhere. I avoided him and it was definitely getting darker as I climbed a hill onto a notoriously bad section of my road, which is littered with unfilled potholes, and badly patched ones. There are also not many street lights.
Now, the light was operating under the charge straight out of the box. And had been running on the highest setting for the last twenty minutes or so. It began to do all sorts of crazy things - rapid flashing before turning off, several times. Almost always when I could see a car coming up behind me, or one in front coming the other way. I had to turn it back on, but not before bouncing over a pothole. I feared I'd done some damage to my tyre or rim. Luckily, I hadn't.
But, with a couple of kilometres to go, I noticed this MASSIVE lorry coming one way, and then checked behind me, only to see the headlights of another one coming the other way. Aaaaaand then the light did it's rapid-flashing-before-turning-off-leaving-me-blind thingy, again.
"Holy s***. Holy s***. Holy s***!" I managed to turn off the road into a small dirt siding, which turned out to be someone's driveway, and allowed them both to pass each other without having to go around me. Smart decision, I thought, will always come second to a BFO lorry. I finally met some street lights before finding my own driveway and making it home. I remember thinking, "That was utterly terrifying."
The light is now fully charged, so it was a low battery that made it do the blinky-thing.