Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Spoke too soon?

The wacky mid-Atlantic weather is up to its tricks again. Monday evening, as I was getting ready to ride home from work, I heard the local public radio station announce that it was 65 degrees outside (at 7pm!)... so I rode home in shorts, comfortably. Tuesday, a front came rolling in, with blustery winds and grey skies... and a few small snow flurries. This morning it was 22 degrees outside, with a wind chill making it feel like 12. I guess winter is making an appearance here after all. Just as well I have the studded tires on the bike, eh? And Monday evening I worked on getting the Shimano hub generator hooked up to the lights, so we should be ready to roll in the dark when I need to.

Speaking of hub generators (or dynamos to those outside the US), I started using one a couple of months ago on my Bridgestone XO-2, and I love it. It is so handy to just hit the switch and pedal, and shazzam, light! I still use some battery powered red LEDs on the rear, and have a battery light as back up on the front, but the generator light alone is more than enough to ride with. Count me as a fan of these systems... so much so that I'm building up a demo setup for customers to look at in the shop... "Hey, look! When you spin the wheel the light comes on!"

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