And you

light up my path

you give me sight

to carry on.

Actually no.  No you don’t.  What you do is blind me and ruin my night vision.  Oh I know, you need to be able to see where you’re going.  Strangely the rest of us manage without carrying around searchlights from a prison.  The duo beam is a nice touch too – you know, where you have one on your handlebars and one on your helmet.  What I really, truly, deep-down love though?  The duo-beam with a double-flash and            (yes, and) a forward-facing red light.

Cheap, effective, bright enough to get noticed.

Qualifier: My ride starts and ends on the road but that’s 80% or more on the relatively unlit path.  I have this set from Bontrager (courtesy the fine folks at Ridley’s).  It’s not powerful and when there’s no snow, it’s not really enough light to ride by but that’s not why I have it.  It has a seizure-inducing blink mode on it, and I ride in that mode.  Not only does it use up less batteries that way, it’s very noticeable and when I’m on the road, I want to be sure I’m noticed.  The rear light also runs in a blink mode for the same purpose – a solid red light blends in too easily with the rest of the visual noise.Now, it’s a debatable area of pathway cycling etiquette about the use of flashing lights on the path.  If we’re honest, they’re obnoxious.  I try to use the least obnoxious setting on the tail light that’s still attention-grabbing.  If I could reach it while I was riding, I’d make it solid on the pathway but considering I start and end on the road and am not flexible enough to change it on the fly, flashing it shall be.

I have been using the flashing headlight on the path and really, I have no excuse.  There’s no need for it, so tonight I turned it off on the path and fired it back up again when I made it onto the road.  Easy peasy.  However…  I don’t just go along riding on a dark path without some sort of light. Not so that I can see (I can see fine until Joe Double Searchlight Flashy-Strobe comes wheeling by), but so that I can be seen by everyone else on the path.

The other morning, I watched a light bouncing along ahead of me and made a quick estimate of our closing speed as I was on their side of the path thanks to the windrow of snow the plow pushed onto the path.  The scene in front of me was dark – a black path (on the side I’m incorrectly on), a black patch of trees ahead of me that the path winds around and the little headlight bobbing towards me through the trees.  It was not until the last moment that the bobbing light was blotted out by an unlit rider barely 2 meters away.  It was pure luck we didn’t collide though why he didn’t vocalize or ring his bell a bit earlier is beyond me.  Whatever – I was in the wrong on his side, but he was nothing more than a dark shape on a dark path on a dark background.  Foolish.  And invisible.

So – I have a headlight that I turn off on the path and a UFO light (courtesy of the one and only Lance Barrington) on my helmet that I leave on all the time.  It lets everyone else on the path know that I’m there instead allowing them to discover me through physical contact.

So there’s the pathway ninjas – runners, dog walkers and cyclists that insist on being out there in the dark without any lights whatsoever, and their polar opposites – the military surplus anti-aircraft light wearing riders and their strobe-light wearing brethern.

To the former: Look – this isn’t hard.  It’s dark out, those of you in your parka with the hood up, you’re not alone out there, there’s not enough light to make what marginal reflective strips you have on your clothing glow and we’re all preoccupied with finding the line least likely to throw us in the puckerbrush.  Please stop acting like video-game obstacles – put a $4 LED light on your chest and back or even a single wide-view one on your hip.

You…other guys.  Maybe you haven’t thought this through at all.  Sure – you can see a white rabbit sitting stock-still in the snow at 500 yards now, but we can’t see anything as you’re coming up or after you’ve gone by until our night-vision comes back.  And dear god, don’t turn your head to look at us with your helmet-mounted spotlight either – it’s bad enough we’ve been blinded on the approach, no need to force the issue as you go by.  Besides, we can’t see anything except a bright spot – no eye contact, no smile – hell, I don’t know if you’re nodding hello to a fellow winter cyclist, just looking around or intentionally trying to fry my retinas.

Here’s the deal – you don’t need that kind of light when there’s snow on the ground.  The amount of reflection, especially on an overcast morning, should be plenty sufficient to navigate the pathways well above the posted speed, in the snow.  Save that stuff for the roads – please.