Light Time

It’s nearly that time.

Yesterday, for the first time since the summer, I rode home from work, at a sensible time, and had to use lights. The situation wasn’t helped by the rain and general gloom of the day, but still it felt like a turning point in the year. Riding to and from work becomes less of a cruise in the sunshine and more of an adventure. Your thoughts turn to long sleeves and whether your lights were charged last night. Occasionally you’ll even have the kind of thrilling ride where your lights run out and you finish the ride as a stealth rider, slipping silently through the night and hoping that you avoiding cars is enough to preserve you from them hitting you.

Some days there’ll be a strange excitement to flicking the lights on and easing out into a heavily silent night, cutting a line through the darkness and following it with your wheels. You’ll feel like you’re on some mission, as a spy, tooled up against the black city, and a mini-hero when you get home. Other days it’ll be depressing and you’ll resent always having to ride in the dark, and never in daylight. Either way you’ll hear more, from the running of your tyres on the road, to any creaks in your bike, making the ride either poetry or torture.

Your house is about to become scattered with various combinations of cycling clothing as you try and match each day to the weather outside, and your electricity sockets will be attached to various chargers to keep your lights burning. Batteries will become your best friends, if you didn’t invest in rechargeable lights, and you’ll find space in your bag for a waterproof, whether it’s for the rain, or just an extra layer for when the ride home turns out to be a lot chillier than the ride in.

You are about to enter the world of the true commuter. Not a cyclist enjoying the sunshine on an opportune day and then clogging up the bike racks at work, but a member of the hard-core. You’ll ride in the dark, in the dark and the rain, in the dark, the rain and the wind, and in anything the world can throw at you. You’re going to warm your legs up in the shower, drip all over fitted carpets and layer for all you’re worth. You’ll miss the sunshine, but remember it as your reward for the tough rides. Whatever you do, you’ll still be quicker home than on the bus and only as wet as on a long wait at the bus stop. While the rest of the world is still crammed onto a tube, or steaming up the windows on a wet bus ride, you’ll be in the shower and on the sofa watching Hollyoaks.

If you're lucky, and she's in town, you might even find yourself riding with a global mega-star.

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