Run, Run, Rudolph

Did the old Conte's ride last night, only I was a little beat up and didn't feel like doing the A ride so I did the "rolling hills" ride. It started off as about 1000 people, none of whom really knew where the route went, so we made it up. What ended up happening was 6 or so of us split off and another dude and I beat the crap out of each other. He won.

Today's GJ survey is an apt one, as by the time I got through socializing it was pretty much pitch for the ride home. Armed with Nasty McBLinky on the back of the seat and the trusty Planet Bike Spok light up front, I was tres visible but didn't have exactly daytime visibility in front of me. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't a set up you'd want to go mountain biking with.

In the interest of not getting hit by a car or something, I took the Cap Crescent up from Georgetown to River. That should be called the Darwin Trail. What are you going to do about joggers who don't wear any sort of lights or reflective stuff at all? Better yet, they DO wear headphones, so they are deaf, blind and invisible. For the most part you can see them from pretty far away, so it's not that big a deal.

Credit is due to a large percentage of people who have totally reasonable set ups. The rule I generally go by is "if I encountered someone set up and acting like I am, would that cause a problem or not?" Several people had fully legit light setups (most, unfortunately, were going the other way so I was severely blinded every once and again), and most of the ones who didn't had a setup similar to mine and so were easy to see and gauge.

One bonehead, however, failed to get the message that the red light goes on the BACK of the bike. Jesus H, that was confusing and nearly fatal, or at least very painful. Is a red blinky light on steady shine REALLY giving you any visibility (as in able to see, not able to be seen)? These things actually matter, people. Seriously.

I used to have a pretty sweet light. A friend borrowed it to go on a night time mountain bike adventure. There's a very long story, but I don't think I'll ever see it again. Being able to ride when it's dark out is pretty money, so I think I'll probably get another light sometime before too long.

In other news, WKO+ is cool. I have the trial version downloaded onto my work laptop. It is easily able to import .tcx files from Garmin Connect. Golden Cheetah seems to be somewhat wonderful, but the Windows version I downloaded doesn't understand the power component of the .tcx file. Maybe it works better on a Mac? I'm going to try it this evening. Power Agent for Mac so far seems almost totally unable to import .tcx files. Nothing is ever easy.