Turn around Brightttttttttttt liiiiiights

With the recent weather I've been unable to ride as much as I'd have liked but as I got a lovely set of wee Exposure lights I thought it was about time to put them to good use. Since my "rediscovery" my experience of riding in the dark has been limited apart from two brief (5mile) night rides with Mikey so I wasn't overly confident about striding out alone on the local unlit roads.

However, as my mileage was starting to slump I realised that I just had to grit my teeth and get pedalling, so much to Mikeys surprise he got a text message to say that I would meet him after work. Eek! That was it. There was now no going back so donned in my entire winter wardrobe (it was a tad cold) I set out on my adventure.

I was surprised at how much I immediately enjoyed the sense of solitude you get from riding in the dark. It was invigorating yet weirdly tranquil. That was until I suddenly found myself less than a metre away from hitting a pedestrian. Unfortunately, although really bright and adequate, the front light doesn't allow me to see a long way ahead on completely unlit roads and some stupid youth in dark clothing was walking down the wrong side of the unlit road. Grrr. Did his mother never teach him how to walk down county roads where there are no pavements? If I hadn't seen a flash of white from his trainers at the last minute I would have probably hit him. Freakin' imbecile!

Other than that, it was a lovely experience.  My rear light was obviously doing the trick as overtaking cars were giving me a very wide berth. Additionally, the front lights were making me highly visible.  It was really quite odd as most of the cars coming out of side streets actually gave me time to pass instead of impatiently jumping in ahead of me. (They must have presumed that I was a motorbike/scooter). I was pleasantly shocked by the courtesy of most of the motorists.

The sense of solitude though was slightly problematic. It gave me the false sense of being all alone in the world so instead of the usual singing in my head I found myself singing out loud. Loudly! Wouldn't have been so bad if I was singing something cool, but NO; the only thing that kept going through my head and popping out of mouth was a little adaptation/mash up of Bonnie Tylers Total Eclipse of the heart and Petula Clark's Down Town. "Turn around Brightttttttttttt liiiiiights"