Its been unusually foggy around Philadelphia as of late, especially for December. I keep waiting for the cold, dry, brisk mornings that force you to double up on tights and debate putting on ski goggles, but those mornings havnt come yet. Instead we’ve seen a number of 40-50F, 95% humidity mornings where the fog was so thick that youd have to wipe my glasses every half mile just to see. I wonder if this is comparable to the winters in San Francisco?! Anyways its not that I mind the temperature, the fog, or the perpetual misting rain that comes with it, its more the visibility issue. And its not my lack of visibility (though that sometimes sucks), but the ability to feel like you’re actually ‘seen’ on the roads. Yah I have reflectors on the bike/bag/everywhere, and yah I have lights (was running 3 up front and 2 on the rear), but in the thickest of fog its hard to tell if that’s enough. I tried to be extra cautious; taking it slow, and using the most amount of double-track that I could, but I wasn’t having fun on the ride in at all. I dislike not having an enjoyable ride to work, that’s usually one of the best parts of my day. On top of that, id say 1/10 of the cars out driving that morning didn’t feel like putting their lights on even though visibility was terrible. Ive found people who don’t use lights when its dusk/dawn or conditions with poor visibility usually aren’t as worried about safe driving as you might hope. That makes sense. On top of that it’s the holiday season and people are in wild-man mode. Be careful out there.
Luckily the fog lifted and I was able to see a new installment on my route this morning. The car must have been abandoned & burned up last night as I didn’t see it yesterday. For some reason this area in/around the train station is used as a dump for trash, couches and now ill throw in cars into that mix. Ive seen 3 or 4 vacant/burned cars thus far… gotta love Philadelphia.
I had heavy frost and unscraped windshields to contend with today. Couple degrees makes all the difference but it has been fairly mild so far.
Ahh almost forgot about scraping windshields or lack thereof. Cant wait for snow drifts on top of cars as well/