Friday, December 11, 2009

Before Midnight Ridazz All-City Toy Ride

So in an hour, I'll head out to Lincoln Park to meet up with the other riders heading up to LA for the Toy Ride -- everyone brings an unwrapped toy that ends up donated to the East LA Women's Shelter. It's a 21 mile ride, and they are going to do it via streets (instead of via the RIOLA bike path). It should be a lot of fun, but I wonder how many people will be doing the ride. Once we get there, we'll ride around downtown to Olvera St, and then there's a huge party that goes on all night. I am going to be catching the Blue Line back home (the last one leaves around 1250am) but yeah. Party people will be partying all night long. Real midnight ridazz are like that. I am just going along to soak up their glow.

I am Prepared. These are the things I got today.

  • Extra tube for my bike.
  • Tire irons.
  • First Aid kit.
  • Rain Jacket with Hood and Rain Pants (in case it really, really, really rains heavy)
  • Xmas lights (battery powered).
  • Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted on my helmet.

The blinky officially makes me way, way, too lit up, but basically, the idea is that if I get hit by a car with all the lights I have, there's no way in hell anyone can say they didn't see me. So now, illumination-wise, I have

  • 1) Planet Bike Beamer Headlight mounted on handlebars, steady
  • 2) Knog Skink 4 led headlight mounted to the head tube, flashing
  • 3)Trek Bar End red lights
  • 4) Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted to rear rack
  • 5) Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted to helmet
and this doesn't count the string of xmas lights. Again, the idea is both visibility and a bar to allegations of comparative liability in the even of a mishap. Not that my being way too lit up is necessarily going to stop allegations of fault -- when I handled auto claims, I had people who hit parked trucks allege the parked truck was somehow at fault. But yeah.

So now I realize that while I was buying all this stuff for me to ride the toy down to LA, I forgot to buy a toy. I'm smart like that. So I'm off to get a toy.

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