17°?!

Winter commuting is fun in a strange way, but this morning was simply cold. No fun snow, only one smidgen of ice. It was 17 degrees F when I started this morning, cooler than most of my winter riding, and it's still autumn! But of course it was nice to ride, the sun was out, and along the wonderfully wild Mill St. I had to cut through a bold group of 14 adult turkeys.

The thing I had most forgotten is how bad the car exhaust smells in the cold. I guess it's just that the engines are cold, but it really feels like the pollution is a couple times worse than when it's above freezing. This will be an incentive to take lower-traffic routes, even though they're longer.

Post-Carbon Comics

I saw this in a recent DirtRag magazine, and a couple clicks in google located it for you. Interestingly, the next-to-last panel was bowdlerized in DirtRag - is it too gory on the blog? Also, there's a prequel comic on the April 2008 page that's a bit different from what I would have guessed.

Almost my favorite part of the comic is the logo for Post-Carbon Comics, a bit too small to read on the blog. The center of the logo is a mound labelled "world oil production", and an arrow pointing to about 1/4 of the way down the slope to the right with a tag "we are here". Nice!

Mine Falls

E and I had a beautiful ride at a spot in southern NH long recommended by MF. It's a relatively easy place to ride, and we had no injuries. But E did have a rather spectacular crash, captured here. He laughed as he slid in those pine needles.

Later, he found the steep and tall, but smooth descent shown here. I was nervous about him riding it, and if I were alone I probably would have skipped it, but E really wanted to try it and a few minutes later we were both enjoying it. (The picture is at an angle, making the path appear less steep than it really is. You can see how the bases of the trees are bent to make them vertical.)

Halloween

E dressed as a space alien, adapting a homemade costume A and I made two years ago. I became a lounge singer; my main song was Brandy. M, the dog, always looks ridiculous, so she's not really dressed as anything - just extra ridiculous.

Commute Foliage

The best part of Autumn bike commuting in New England is the foliage. These pictures are from a spot where I cross a reservoir on Trapelo Road. This is an early morning shoot, when the water is generally still and the sun just coming up. I cross on a low bridge and these pictures show the view off either side. A mile before this I had the unusual visual treat of riding toward a setting full moon, but it was below the tree line when I got the camera out.

Impressionistic Photo Mistake

This is from the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) Kid's day last weekend. The shutter was way too slow for the precise focus I had hoped for, but I rather like the suggestion of movement in the resulting blur.

Helmet Lights

I started wearing a forward-facing helmet light around a year ago, after a couple winters of having just a rear red LED there. The upper picture shows that first version, a true prototype. I built the bracket myself, based on a home-machined aluminum plate. Over that year I found two major benefits of a forward helmet light. Its height off the road makes it far more visible than my handlebar-mounted light (which I still use) over obstacles like road construction barrels and some shrubs. More important is I can turn it toward any oncoming drivers including those approaching from side roads. In fact, it amplifies my attempts to make eye contact, grabbing the attention of drivers and pulling their eyes to mine. Nice.

Now I wear this helmet for all commutes and I miss the light when I use a lighter helmet for long rides. So I decided to rebuild the helmet light to upgrade its LED light to a far brighter model, and fix the mount. The lower picture shows the new version, based on a Planet Bike Beamer 3 light which is around an order of magnitude brighter than the original. This light comes with a nice handlebar mount, but luckily for me it's made of two separable parts connected with a screw. Removing that screw left me with a flat mount which I built a helmet plate around. (It makes me wonder whether Planet Bike offers a helmet mount, but the bike shop didn't offer one.)

While we're on the topic, here's why I built that first mount. The last time I was hit by a car (Jan 18, 2006 in Acton) I was going home from work under a pitch dark sky. I had my very powerful headlight on, nearly as powerful as a car's low beam headlight (11W HID ~= 40W Halogen). A minivan stopped at a stop sign, and the driver must not have looked much for oncoming traffic before pulling out just as I rode in front of him. I saw what was happening, turned my head to look at the driver and even took my right hand off the bar to wave at him to try to get his attention. No luck. In that moment I felt rather helpless, and I still think about it sometimes. After a while I realized that a helmet light is the best solution for my inability to get the driver's attention. And I make the helmet light blink (as I do all my LED lights) because I believe that's the most eye-catching mode.