Every year the signals that fall is coming arrive in a few specific ways. One of the first occurred last night. Megan and I rode our bikes over to our favorite local sushi restaurant for dinner. We both finished work late so we didn’t leave the house until 7:15 or so. Along the way we stopped for a minute to admire an unusually red setting sun and then continued on to get dinner without thinking much more about the time of day. It was while locking up the bikes and walking inside that the signal came about. I realized I didn’t have my bike lights, and would need them by the time we finished eating.
Every spring, after emerging from a long season of bicycle commuting in darkness, the time comes when I roll into the driveway before its dark enough to really need all of my flashing lights. I still have them on board and clipped to my pack for most of the spring, although regular use and charging starts to fade away.
By summer solstice, at least one light has fallen into disuse. Maybe it was removed for a service event on the stand. Or maybe I had taken it off planning to fix an intermittent contact which had been causing reliability issues earlier in the year. Sometimes they are just broken, as I tend to buy mid grade lights assuming they will last a few years before getting lost, stolen, or just plain broken from my light and gentle touch.
Then, during August, I’m typically riding around light free. I’m not a night owl, and so when we are planning to be out late, special effort is typically needed to remember to grab some lights for the ride back at night. Considering yesterday was September 1st, and we were not planning to be out late, this was the perfect stage for the painful realization that shorter days are coming.
As we walked into the restaurant, the sun was already low in the sky, and I knew full well that by the time we were headed home, it would be dark. Long summer days are one of the best parts of the changing seasons for me. With extra hours comes more productivity, and more fun outside of the house. With our current work schedules leading to 7 o’clock endings to the work day, it won’t be long before I’m riding home under the yellow and red flash of bike lights and waiting for the long summer days of next year.
We rode home full of sushi mostly on the sidewalk, trying to avoid an encounter with texting California drivers. And with some light still left in the sky, it wasn’t quite the darkness of the December solstice.
And I’m not going out of my way just yet to get my lights back on and ready for the seasons darkness either. I’m not even sure where my headlight is anyway, only half of it is mounted to my bars still. But I’ll leave this as a problem for my future self to worry about. We still have a month or so of border time when the light free cruising of summer can continue…