The hunter and the hunted

As my helmet-mounted light blazed through the night sky last night, I wondered why I even bothered to have it on. The thick aftermath of the "freedom to make loud noises" celebration was lingering, filling the low spots with so much thick smoke that I could taste it as I slipped through on my bike, which was now a aggressively geared single speed thanks to a broken derailleur cable. The smoke didn't budge and limited my visibility to mere feet in front of me, reflecting the light back to me and reminding me that I was probably taking years off of my life by breathing the stuff in.

Ahh, but how else could we celebrate representation for our taxation than to burn things?

Aside from being mostly useless in the smoke cloud last night, my light does prove to make my rides more interesting. The light employs the same technology as the latest luxury cars, casting a blinding pure white light that transforms the trail ahead into daylight. For racing on rocky singletrack trails at night, this light is a blessing. For riding around smoke-filled Johnson County at midnight, this light is insanely overkill but a lot of fun.

I'm used to strange reactions from the light. I've had plenty of cars pull over, thinking they'd been nabbed when the gleam hit their mirrors. Approaching cars slow down, not sure what to expect. When riding side-by-side with another HID-equipped rider, it has to look like a jacked-up machine is approaching. It is the law enforcement identity that always creates the most laughs, though, and last night was no exception.

Fireworks are illegal in Johnson County in what appears to be a universally unpopular and mostly disregarded decree likely imposed by some wealthy control freaks. While I agree that fireworks are a colossal waste that pollutes the air and puts countless people (especially children) at risk of injury, there is no denying the value of the thrill people get from loud booms.

In search of this thrill, a large group of teenagers was huddled over some forbidden contraband in a school parking lot. As I passed, I swung the beam of my light their direction and as I came up over the rise that was hiding them, I saw them running for the hills. They must have thought they had been nabbed, but they ran without looking back around the school, completely visible in the lit parking lot the entire time. They were lucky I wasn't a real cop because there is no way they could have gotten away, especially if I was chasing them on a bike. (I'll save my "there should be more cops -cops that are capable riders- on bikes" rant for another time)

Finally, one kid turned around and noticed that the light wasn't coming from a car. He ran a bit more, turned again, looked puzzled and then continued running. He did this until he was pretty sure I had passed, still trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The bright light coming out of nowhere is probably the same strange sight that causes cars to pull over and neighborhood residents to call the police reporting strange sightings.

One such sighting must have been what happened last night, later in my journey. I pulled off into an alleyway to evacuate excess liquids. Admittedly, I picked an alley in a popular J.C. Nichols shopping district in Fairway, which wasn't the best place to blatantly disregard the law by attending to my body's demands. As I emerged from the alley, a Fairway squad car pulled up with its spotlight trained on me.

The cop barked at me, sounding as if he had just had a career breakthrough high-profile bust.

"What are you hiding for?"

Luckily, I was no longer standing there unloading my bladder and I calmly stood there as if I was simply taking a biology-unrelated break. When the officer got a good look at me, I'm guessing I wasn't the renegade teenager he was expecting. I told him I wasn't hiding and was moving along and he stuttered "oh...uh...okay" and just sat there as I rode off. I turned the corner into Westwood, the next suburb, and watched him circle the lot, obviously looking for something.

I left my big, law enforcement enticing light off for the rest of the night.