Pre-Thanksgiving work commute

I was leaving my house yesterday morning and looked at the car in the driveway. Definitely, an iced windshield is the reason why I prefer to ride my bike to work.

Today's morning was much warmer though (another good reason to choose the bike) and on my way to work I stopped at the hardware store to pick up some painting supplies. That's right, after I finish the turkey, I have some painting to do this long weekend. Seeing my helmet, the clerk asked me if I used their bike rack at the front door. When I confirmed, she just said: "Yay, somebody is using it!". Apparently, cyclists in a hardware store are a rare occurrence. Maybe most people have not figured out yet how to transport a snowblower or a shovel on a bike.

Winter will be here soon and it's not the colder mornings and iced windshields that remind me about it. It is the... Christmas decorations I start seeing everywhere. We are supposed to have Thanksgiving first, but I guess that some people are thinking about Christmas already.

Anyway, days are getting shorter and since riding in darkness is unavoidable at this time of the year, I decided to add some extra lights to my bike. Unfortunately, my Coffee doesn't come with a generator front hub so I have to rely on rechargeable lights. I am using my tiny DiNotte light all the time and it works great. It is small, light, bright and consumes batteries at a reasonable rate (usually, when I commute daily, I recharge it just once a week). But I thought that I should have a just-in-case backup so the last weekend I visited REI and got a Planet Bike Blaze Two-Watt front light. REI had it on sale for only $45 (Regular price is close to $60). I really like this light. It is powerful enough to illuminate the road ahead and runs on only 2 AA batteries. Nice! The minor problem I encountered was when installing it on my handlebars. I had to mount it upside-down, otherwise there was no place to have it positioned properly since the wide basket bracket occupies most of the flat section of my bars. It's probably not designed to be installed this way but it does its job just fine.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!