Spring forward, fall ... into a daze

Posted by Andrew Hartsock November 2, 2009 at 8:22 a.m.

The beginning and, especially, end of daylight saving time throw me for a loop every time.

It’s just one hour, but for days after we spring forward and again after we fall back, I feel out of sorts, and that’s especially true when I’m on the bike.

Maybe it’s just my advanced age that makes me resistant to change.

After all, the 60-minute shift affects only one of my four daily bike-commute legs. But it’s enough to put the zap on my pea brain for a lot longer than it should.

Truth be told, I sort of like ditching daylight saving time. In the weeks leading up to fall-back night, riding home for dinner toward the end of the evening rush hour I find myself riding into the setting sun.

Now, I like the beauty of a sunset as much as the next sensitive guy, but if I can’t see what’s ahead of me because of that blinding orange orb, I know there’s a pretty good chance the driver of the car behind me can’t see me. So I actually try to plot a course that’s not so directly into the sun.

The end of daylight saving time, however, means that the sun has dipped below the horizon for my ride home for dinner. I no longer need to fret about becoming a sun-blind casualty, but the cost is, oh, yeah, it’s now dark.

That’s not a bad thing, but it does take some getting used to.

For instance, I try not to wear dark colors at night. All of my jackets have reflectives on them, so it doesn’t much matter what my shirt underneath looks like. But the other day, it was warm enough I didn’t need a coat; without thinking, I found myself pedaling home wearing the darkest green in my closet.

I have to pay closer attention to things like the charge left in the batteries that power my lights, too, and, candlepower be damned, it’s always more challenging riding in the dark than in the light. It’s easier to overlook potholes and rocks and wet spots and opossums in the dark. Come to think of it, I believe opossums only come out in the dark.

But I think the biggest change in the early days after the end of daylight saving time is that I’m sharing the dark roads with a lot more folks. For my ride back to work after dinner, there are only a fraction of the vehicles on the road that there are earlier in the evening. For my ride home early in the morning, I have the roads nearly all to myself.

But in the 6 p.m. gloaming, there are lots of people headed home, groping their way through the dark.

If it weren’t for the fact daylight saving time is a governmental invention, I’d figure it was just nature’s way of keeping me on my toes.

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honeychild (Mel Briscoe) says…

i love that extra hour tho... i feel like i've been given an extra hour of sleep for about the first 2 weeks of "standard time", until my body gets used to it.
November 2, 2009 at 12:48 p.m.
Irish (Leslie Swearingen) says…

I worry about everyone out there on a bicycle.
I saw a car nearly turn into a tow truck at 11 and Vermont because the driver had his head way down to the right, almost below the level of the dashboard and so did not even see the truck until the driver honked at him.
If it had been someone on a bicycle they would have been hit.
I feel like I take my life in my hands every time I walk across the street.
Maybe you will have to get some night goggles. How about a can of spray paint so you can mark the car of a scofflaw for identification later.
November 2, 2009 at 12:51 p.m.
AnnaUndercover (Anna Undercover) says…

I'm with honeychild on the extra hour. I felt like I was sleeping in this morning. :)
November 3, 2009 at 1:16 a.m.