There was a good bit of shooting this morning. I took the photo on the way back. On my ride out, there was no sign and I was having a WTF moment. Got in aero position to avoid any strays.

Whoa, did anyone else know there's a lighting subforum here?

I should start a thread: "Blinky?"

That's got to be worth a good ten pages.

no. i'll do it next year again though.

flashing red ones work fine. oh wait..thats all of them. glad to help.

What kind of light did you have in front? And how close did you come to getting killed?

i had a crappy one. it was weak. it is only really useable in city streets with lighting. In the dark country roads especially when the clouds covered the moon, i was seriously scared. i came down a downhill at no more than 30 mph and i couldn't see more than about 10 yards ahead and very faintly too. i got around the problem by watching out for the people with big Fing halogen front lights. the difference from regular little LED lights was like night and day. Theirs were like a car headlight. lit up the whole of the road and much around the road. i tailgated these people in the darkest places.

i don't know about getting killed but i nearly went down twice. those were serious dangers wheree i could easily have gone down just as likely as staying up. a bunch of other occasions i was scared enough to brake to a crawl. Night riding is fun! I loved it.

Was this an organized event? How many cyclists were on the road?

i once played golf where there was a pheasant shoot going on in the woods ajoining one of the holes. while we were putting, gunshot pellets rattles through the tree tops and pheasants flew out over the green to escape. we shat our pants and took gimmes and ran.

It was semi organised which means it was arranged, time and place but there were no signs, no support, no marshalls, nothing. It was like one giant group ride. that's what made it scary. If you break down at 3 am in the middle of nowhere, you are Fed. i saw a lot of peaople broken down by the roadside and I felt so sorry for them. there was excellent arranged return journey by bus and our bikes were taken care of. I reckon there were more than about 700 cyclists. last year there were 1000 cyclists. You could see blinkeys for miles and miles strung out along the road and groups huddling around a strong headlight. at each pub huge peletons of people would take off after having a drink.

it was one of thse things that started off as an anarchic hipster thing and then became mainstream and just exploded. it was even blogged by the Guardian newspaper so thats how mainstream it got. what with the cycling revolution we are supposed to be going through, the media got more interested i think.

Oh, I thought you were in a small group.

I never heard of a large night century ride before. It does seem somewhat safer in that motorists know to look out for you.

If any kind of group ride sounded fun to me, this would come closest. I'd have to get a dynohub to power my blacklight, and wear a florescent kit.

they couldn't not see us. we virtually took over the roads. at the later times there just wearent any cars around. it was eerie.

you should have seen the racer boys in team kit. trying to do a rotating paceline in the dark with hundreds of cyclists jostling for road space was hilarious. there were some big racing clubs taking part. i recognised their jerseys.

I got my derailleur. I went into trader joe's afterwards to get some milk, opened the packaging, and the nice shiny Ultegra derailleur fell out. It has a nice dent above the mounting bolt now. Oh well.

Just got back from a couple hours of fast mountain biking.

i just found a youtube of the ride. this bugger finished 2 hours before I did. When he arrived at the finish, i had just passed out on a grass verge. Looks like he's one of those racer boys in team kit.

i skipped the dentist for 7 years and had 12 cavities, needed my wisdom teeth out, needed a deep gum cleaning, and 4 root canals...

I got a second opinion and went down to 8 cavities and 2 root canals, no mention of the other stuff. While this still took several visits and really sucked, the fact that they were gonna drill me out a bunch of extra times (there was no pain on anything) just for money shocked me. I hate dentists.

i have a suggestion for you heckler. don't go back for another 20 years.

"We had a huge banquet at the Motorola museum, with a pile of bigwigs. I wanted to make a favorable impression on the head honcho whom they sat me next to, so I didn't say jack."

- Bob Roll

The guys an effin' genius I tell you.

Same just happened to me (except I go every 6 mos). Never had a cavity before, but new dentist said 8. I was shocked, went for a second opinion, only had one. I filed a complaint with my insurance about them.

NYU visit went well today. Picked up two T-shirts at the NYU bookstore. The 'NYU Football' shirt below is arguably the best college athletics T-shirt ever.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...NYUTshirts.jpg

NYU doesn't have a football program. Very big school. Small in sports. Division 3 for everything except for one sport that they field a Division 1 program for. Which sport is that you ask?

Fencing of course.

Pcad, you look angry.

Get off my lawn kid.

Neither does Virginia Commonwealth University but you can go into the student store and buy the football t-shirts. Across the back it says "Still Undefeated"!

metric century ftw!