Friday afternoon I was unpacking my giant backpack. Looking specifically for my taillight and headlight so I would remember to recharge them over the weekend. After hauling all my shit out of the bag I couldn’t find the headlight. Then I took another look at the clothing pile and found the light stuck to the forearm of my jacket. It was still warm to the touch when I grabbed it. The light melted a hole through the jacket like a cigarette that didn’t find the ashtray.
The jacket has three brown circles burned in, one of them goes all the way through. The lens of the headlight has a permanent brown skidmark smudge. Both, badges of honor to remind me of that day, the day I saw the light.
In full sunlight commuting home, I plan to schlepp this thing home in a tall-can coozie hand made by those guys at DANK bags. I used to think that on a Seattle spring day overheating my headlight was not an issue. If it’s strapped on my handlebars for the ride home it stays cool. But if it’s buried in my big backpack – under a U-lock, helmet, pump, tools, jacket, hoodie, gloves, lunch bag and several books from Foster’s book club meeting – there’s a chance the Lezyne 1400 could overheat.
Fortunately Lezyne built in a shutdown feature that kicks in when the light overheats. Before Friday I found that feature to be theoretical or unachievable in Seattle. But then I saw the light.
The pile of stuff I unloaded from the backpack included a few books from Foster’s Big Time Book Club Friday afternoon courtesy of Mo Fo. One of the books I came home with is Roald Dahl’s “Switch Bitch”. It brings me joy to think of the spine of this book situated just so and pressing on the headlight just right somewhere deep inside the Ortlieb. A switch bitch switch.
You’re probably familiar with Dahl’s many children's books, like Matilda, The BFG, James & the Giant Peach, and Willie Wonka. I knew of all those stories and resulting movies. But I didn’t know much about Dahl’s adult books. Although I was quite aware of the “snozzberries tasting like snozzberries” on Willie Wonka’s edible wallpaper, I didn’t know exactly that Dahl used snozzberry in his adult novel “Uncle Oswald” as a euphemistic term for some male anatomy.
The four stories in this book were all originally published in Playboy magazine between 1965 and 1974. The stories are entertaining but they’re dated, misogynistic and may offend more than a few people in 2026.
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