Another long ride today and any time I venture out onto the roads, there is one piece of bike equipment that I never forget – lights.

I actually have two lights on my bike; one at the front and one at the back.  Both are made by Trek and are extremely bright.  I run them both in random flashing mode, which I find makes me more visible to drivers.

I bought these lights a couple of years ago and almost immediately noticed, that cars started ‘behaving’ differently around me.  Most gave we a wider berth when passing and fewer would pull out of side roads in front of me.

It is still critical for me to ride defensively, but the light are important and they definitely make it safer for me on the road.  If you don’t have lights … please buy some.  It’s a very small price to pay, to make you so much more visible to drivers.

Talking of safety, I had to ride very carefully on some parts of my ride today.  It’s road maintenance season in Pennsylvania, and that means local municipalities are starting to oil and chip the back roads.  If you don’t know about oil and chips, it’s exactly like it sounds.  Basically a road crew covers the road with sticky oil and then covers that oil with gravel chips. This is very bad for cyclists.  They always use an excess of ‘chips’, which means there is extensive loose gravel all over the road.  The roads become very slick.

I had three sections of road, that were freshly treated with oil and chips on my ride today.  I had to ride through those sections very slowly and I was gripping my handlebars tight the whole time.  Cornering was an adventure.  Fortunately, I made it through without issues.

My overall ride was not bad, but my legs were tired after yesterday’s long run.  The most important part however, is that I made it home safely.   Stay safe out there…