“Sorry, mate, didn’t see you there...”

Categories: adventures-with-my-bicycle

Date: 04 October 2010 11:36:20

... is, I suspect, never a sentence I will ever hear uttered in my general direction. I was tootling along to work this morning, stopped at a set of lights, when a taxi driver leaned out of the side window to attract my attention.

“Oh dear, what did I do wrong?” I thought.

“’Scuse me, miss?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to say how easy it was to see you with those lights and that thing* across your back. Thanks. Nice bike.”

The lights are two Knog Beetle white lights on the front forks, plus the dynamo she came fitted with, and on the back I’ve got the red light she came fitted with plus a Knog Skink on the outside pannier, and “that thing” is a Bobbin Bicycles Miss World Sash.

Those of you who are friends on Facebook or follow me on Twitter may have picked up on the fact that I’m going to make a cape out of Lumatwill, as well.

Getting hit because I dazzled a driver might be a problem, but cycling a black bike, in the dark, with no lights, dark clothing, and, if a helmet is present, it’s dangling casually off one of the handlebars, strikes me as a way to remove yourself from the gene pool swiftly and messily.