I need new glasses. Well, I've needed new glasses for about three years now. I'm not sure whether my vision has changed or not, but I do know that my glasses are a spectacle (pardon the pun...or not)! The lenses are scratched, I lost a nose-piece and they have been out of style for about four years. The clip-on sunglass lenses are scratched too. I step on them about every two months. To their credit, they have proved to be quite durable.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, with the time change, (by the way, thanks USA for talking Canada into postponing the daylight savings for two extra weeks), I am finding that I am driving more often at dusk or in the dark. Not cool for someone with anything less than 20/20 vision.
Last night when I was driving home at dusk, I sensed rather than saw a shadow cross the road ahead of me. It is SUPER HARD to see at dusk. The headlights can't pierce the grey left behind when the sun slips below the horizon. Why is that do you suppose? When driving a car, why does it seem harder to see at dusk than at dark? Anyhow I am convinced it was a deer, or a dog, or adolescent Siamese twins.... OK so maybe I don't know what it was, but I know it crossed the road and climbed down into the ditch.
It makes me skittish when I see movement in the dark. I grab the steering wheel a little harder and I catch myself holding my breath. I hate not knowing at the best of times. I REALLY hate not knowing at 100kmph.
Tonight I left late. It rained for most of the afternoon so it was grey for most of the day. Dusk lasted about 3 minutes because it got dark fast. Anyhow I had to go to the...what...hmm..slaughterhouse...no...the place where you have your dead meat turned into food meat. Meat processing place. Whatever. Anyhow, I had to go pick up some venison meat for my Dad and it's almost all backroads the entire way. I started out confident as I normally do, and then - wham! - I run over some soft, squishy pink used-to-be-alive thing on the road and it makes a thump-thump as it balls up under my front tires then my rear tires. Yuck! No hard-feelings though. It was so disfigured I couldn't tell if it was a pretty little rabbit or somebody's Hot Turkey Sub. I decide it's someone's take-out because my day has been too good to surrender to thoughts of mangled bunnies.
All of the traffic that I was travelling with seemed to turn off into side-roads and driveways and I found myself alone on dark roads. What was that? I saw a glimmer in the ditch. I braked. It was a tiny reflector on the back of a road sign. I sped up. What was that? I saw a glimmer but it moved this time. Ah, long grass blowing in the wind in front of somebody's reflective lane marker. Super. I grit my teeth. What's that dark thing in the road? I slow down and hobble over a freshly patched pothole at a whopping 50 kmph (that's like 24mph for all my American friends). Gonna be a long drive home I decided.
I wonder if new glasses are going to help me. Maybe I should forget my glasses and find a super-luminescent headlamp for the car. How would bumper-mounted foglights and a roof-rack-light look on my Ford Focus? Maybe I should just drive a lighthouse.
2 comments:
I think your eye is like the aperture of a camera. There is enough light around at dusk that it wants to close some. But when it's dark out the aperture is all the way open and it lets a lot reflected light in.
That's my guess.
Hey, not all of us Yanks are happy with the time change! ;)
I find myself going to work in the morning, when it's light out, and going home when it's definitely night. Yuck. I think I'd almost prefer going to work in the pre-dawn and going home after dusk.
Maybe new headlights on your Ford Focus would help, but probably not.
Driving at night is no fun. Especially when you end up squishing Hot Turkey Subs.
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