Wednesday, December 3, 2008

nite ridin' ediket


For those of you who do not know, let me point out a few tips for proper night riding etiquette.


1. bring you own lights

2. put a full charge on your lights

3. never leave a lightless friend behind


If you find yourself on a ride without a light, don't panic. There are ways to make it work. Make sure you have been assigned a riding buddy, and stick to that wheel like Chris on M&M's. Look at what they are looking at, don't look at the void between your wheel and the lighted wheel.


Now, if you have two non lighted bikes, per one lighted bike, the rules are different. You have to split up and run the lighted bike in the middle. If you try to stack two deep behind a lighted bike, the loser in last place will surely fall off the back as soon as you hit a rough section.


To the guy who is smart enough to bring his fully charged light to the ride, but not smart enough to find friends with operational lighting equipment, here are a couple of tips.


1. Slow your pace down a touch

2. Call out rough sections

3. If you have a lightless dummy in front of you, be sure to shine your light on his trail (if you have a helmet mount).


There, hopefully that helps you out some, and hopefully it will help me out on the next ride (in which I will surely forget to charge my lights or forget them alltogether)

5 comments:

BIGWORM said...

Let me add another thought.

* If you show up with two lights, and your buddy shows up without, FIND a way to get one of yours on his. Otherwise, Karma will slay your light after only 30 minutes. Then you get to be the slow loser riding third behind the Lighted One.

(Sorry BD!)

BIG JIM said...

Great post and good tips for sure. I would change the title, however, to something like "How to Ride With Dummies at Night"

BIGWORM said...

No, that's another post entirely. As often as I ride with you, I should be able to write a Pulitzer winning article on the subtleties of riding with dummies.

BIG JIM said...

Sometimes your words just hurt me to the core.

Human Wrecking Ball said...

This post and the comments are very funny. Why does the dark make everything so much harder?