Another reason why I should ride in the middle of the lane

On 2010-06-27, Peter (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
terryc wrote:

Plus, I'm hoping they do not go Klink- darkness like halogens can.

Three of us were out doing a century late last night and that's what
happened to the halogen user about ten minutes in. Luckily I had one of
those Eveready LED headlamps so we didn't have to turn back.

Beatiflul cool moonlit night for a ride too!

Did the moon also get flat batteries during your ride?

--
TimC
I SAW THIS ONE SPIDER THAT GOT BITTEN BY A
RADIOACTIVE SPIDER AND THE SPIDER GOT SPIDER POWERS!
- Ranjit Bhatnagar

"Geoff Lock" glock@home wrote in message
...
On my usual run back to my place this morning, I came off my bike about
1.5 hr ago at 0330

I had been thinking of some of the posts in this newsgroup (I do think of
strange things when I am riding) and this time I was riding on the road
shoulder. The road was rather dark - no street lights just my bike light
and whatever light there was from distant sources. I have ridden this
section of road many many times before and I usually ride in the middle of
the lane normally except this time.

As I got off the road shoulder to rejoin the lane, I noticed, in the
rather poor lighting available, that boundary (?) between the road
shoulder and the lane seemed very different. By the time it registered in
my brain, I had hit a very rough and bumpy groove, tried to control the
now bucking bike, but at around 27kph, I just simply couldn't do it. I
fell on the roadway, banging various bits of my body on various hard bits
of road and bike, and landing on my arse.

Luckily there were no cars at that time of the morning, so I quickly
picked up my bike and got onto the road shoulder again to recover.

Inspection of the accident cause shows that there seems to be some kind of
road works going on as there is a neat deep cut some 2cm wide and some cms
deep right on the edge between the roadway and the road shoulder. Some
bits of the road shoulder had basically disintegrated into potholes here
and there along that neat edge cut. My front wheel had obviously caught on
the cut edge and the pothole, if you know what I mean.

My left ribs hurt My left pinkie hurts My right shoulder hurts
And I have lost my bike computer

I spent nearly an hour looking for the bike computer to no avail. Might
try again in the day time. I quite like that computer as I bought it
specifically to measure my cadence.

Next time I am gonna stick to riding in the middle of the lane.

When I was about to start commuting to work on my bike a few years ago, I
turned to this newsgroup for tips on how to survive. One of the most useful
ones I learnt was not to ride against the left kerb. There were several
reasons given - one was that drivers would have less tendency to squeeze
past you or force you off the road, another was that you would be unlikely
to run into the kerb, another was that you would be less likely to have
debris collected in the gutter from puncturing the tyres, yet another was
that riding away from the kerb would give you more room to manoeuver - to
get out of trouble. the advice served me well.

Henry.

On 25/06/2010 11:29 AM, thefathippy wrote:
On Jun 24, 5:02 am, Geoff Lockglock@home wrote:

http://www.thefathippy.com/lightstoc.htm

AAAAAAAWWWWWWWESOME!!!!! Homemade 20W Headlamps!!!!!

Maybe modify them for tail lights as well No copper is gonna tell me
that I am "nearly invisible"

On 27/06/2010 1:02 PM, Peter wrote:
wrote:

Plus, I'm hoping they do not go Klink- darkness like halogens can.

Three of us were out doing a century late last night and that's what
happened to the halogen user about ten minutes in. Luckily I had one of
those Eveready LED headlamps so we didn't have to turn back.

A century??

On 27/06/2010 3:46 PM, hemyd wrote:
"Geoff Lock"glock@home wrote in message
...

I had been thinking of some of the posts in this newsgroup (I do think of
strange things when I am riding) and this time I was riding on the road
shoulder. The road was rather dark - no street lights just my bike light
and whatever light there was from distant sources. I have ridden this
section of road many many times before and I usually ride in the middle of
the lane normally except this time.

When I was about to start commuting to work on my bike a few years ago, I
turned to this newsgroup for tips on how to survive. One of the most useful
ones I learnt was not to ride against the left kerb. There were several
reasons given - one was that drivers would have less tendency to squeeze
past you or force you off the road, another was that you would be unlikely
to run into the kerb, another was that you would be less likely to have
debris collected in the gutter from puncturing the tyres, yet another was
that riding away from the kerb would give you more room to manoeuver - to
get out of trouble. the advice served me well.

I hear you brother.. and it is all true ...

In aus.bicycle on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:06:19 +1000
Geoff Lock glock@home wrote:
On 27/06/2010 1:02 PM, Peter wrote:
wrote:

Plus, I'm hoping they do not go Klink- darkness like halogens can.

Three of us were out doing a century late last night and that's what
happened to the halogen user about ten minutes in. Luckily I had one of
those Eveready LED headlamps so we didn't have to turn back.

A century??

100 whatsits. In Oz it's 100km, in Yankland it's 100miles.

In *my* corner of Oz it's "something I might do one day if you
promised me *no hills*."

Zebee

Zebee Johnstone wrote:
In aus.bicycle on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:06:19 +1000

100 whatsits. In Oz it's 100km, in Yankland it's 100miles.

In *my* corner of Oz it's "something I might do one day if you
promised me *no hills*."

Zebee

I can find you a really really easy one up here in pancake flat Mackay.
You have to go out of your way to find hills in this part of the world.
I'll put a featureless one on next season's Audax calendar for you.
Direct flights from Sydney on Virgin these days.

Peter

TimC wrote:
On 2010-06-27, Peter (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Did the moon also get flat batteries during your ride?


Nah. They put a fresh set in just before midnight.

Geoff Lock glock@home wrote:

A century??

Metric

On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:05:53 +1000, Geoff Lock wrote:

On 25/06/2010 11:29 AM, thefathippy wrote:
On Jun 24, 5:02 am, Geoff Lockglock@home wrote:

http://www.thefathippy.com/lightstoc.htm

AAAAAAAWWWWWWWESOME!!!!! Homemade 20W Headlamps!!!!!

Maybe modify them for tail lights as well No copper is gonna tell me
that I am "nearly invisible"

My wife and I were riding a bike path one night and suddenly this copper
starts screaming "slow down, slow down" and as we get closer I hear a big
"OH". I just wave and say howdy and we keep riding.

They had park their car off the road beside the bike path and t seems
they thought the bright light coming down the path must have been an
earily quiet motor bike. Since we were only doing about 10kms, it
definitely wasn't the speed he was worried about.

For a tail light, I just went and purchased a trailer stop light and
double wired it. The 6W glove matched a 20W halogen headlight and the 20W
stopp light matched the 50W halogen. A regular night commute had about
500m where I had to be on a heavily traffic road with lots of neon, so
they both went on for that short distance.