I grew up in the shadow of Vermont’s Green Mountains, within a few miles of one of the country’s premier trout streams. Whenever I got the chance, I’d cycle to a bridge that crossed the ‘Kill just above a favorite pool and stop my bike in mid span. Then I’d lean out over the water, hoping to catch sight of an angler languidly casting tiny artificial flies, a supple line coiling and uncoiling behind him. The rituals of fly-fishing captivated me, and it wasn’t long before I started badgering my grandfather to reveal the fraternity’s secrets. He resisted initially — it was a fraternity, after all — but I wore him down, and in the end he gave in. He insisted I learn the basics of fish stalking first, though. Several months of intensive tutelage followed. We bushwhacked in to remote beaver ponds. We waded shallow, impatient mountain rills, and we fished the banks of the turbulent river flowing past Grandad’s Adirondack cabin. But while he worked the water with a delicate bamboo wand, tempting trout with scraps of feather and fur dressed on hooks forged from fine wire, I dabbled heavy, barbed irons festooned with writhing worms from a short metal rod. It was more like work than play, to be honest, and my work didn’t end when we got back to camp, either. The braided Dacron® line in my open-face spinning reel soaked up water like a sponge. It had to be stripped and dried before Grandad would let me put my tackle away. Even then, I still had one job left. Grandad’s silk fly line was thirstier than Dacron braid, and the fragile gut leaders always needed special handling. In my role as apprentice, their care became my sole responsibility. So, for several hours at the end of each day, Grandad’s yard looked like a giant spider’s web, and more than once an evening thunderstorm sent me rushing out in a frenzy to gather the threads of my far-flung net before the wind blew them all away.

The nuisance of drying lines and caring for tackle almost put me off fishing altogether, especially as summer drew to a close with no sign that my fish-stalking apprenticeship was coming to an end. I was certainly no closer to learning the secrets of the fly-fishing fraternity. Then something happened that made this seem unimportant: I discovered monofilament nylon. It was magical stuff — strong, elastic, and nearly invisible. Better yet, it didn’t need to be dried at the end of each outing. I began to see spin fishing in a new light. Monofilament wasn’t perfect, of course. When new, it came off the reel in tight spirals, and the knots I made in it seemed to loosen almost as fast as they were tied. But I didn’t mind. Monofilament spared me the chore of drying my line.

With what result? That’s easy. Long after’s summer’s lease had run its course, I continued my apprenticeship on my own, exploring the small streams and beaver ponds close to home with monofilament on my reel. (I even ventured out on the sacred waters of the ‘Kill now and then.) But a new problem soon emerged. Trees crowded close around many of my home waters. Moreover, I didn’t have a boat. My barbed hooks snagged limbs with disconcerting regularity, and no matter how artfully I tugged, I often left monofilament behind. In the end, the cost of replacing lines and terminal tackle — by this time I’d graduated from bait to spinners — was simply more than I could afford. I retired my metal rod for good and turned my attention to other things.

Years passed. I bought my first canoe. I learned to climb. And then, quite suddenly, I returned to the fold. I built a Fenwick® spinning rod from a kit, fitted a Scientific Anglers™ reel, and went back to the river of my youth. It was good. The Fenwick was a delight to cast, almost as lithe and active as my Grandad’s venerable bamboo. And I caught trout. Often. Yet my joy was short-lived. I released most of the fish I landed. Or at least I tried to. But the barbed treble hooks on my spinners were nasty things, nearly impossible to remove cleanly. I still snagged tree limbs, too. Soon I was seeing tangles of monofilament everywhere I looked. I couldn’t pass the buck. I’d met the problem, and it was me. I decided I had to do something, and I did. For the second time in my life, I retired a spinning rod. Then I bought a fly rod and taught myself to cast. Before long, anyone stopping on the bridge above the pool would have seen a new figure silhouetted against the setting sun, her forearm sweeping up from nine o’clock to one and dropping back again, line coiling and uncoiling behind her.

Except that it didn’t. Coil and uncoil behind me, that is. At least not often. Why? Because — like my Grandad before me — I’d adopted the roll cast. It all but eliminated snags, even among the tangle of toppled sycamores at the foot of the cutbank just downstream. Of course I had my bad days, too, days when a flaw in the wind would grab the #18 black gnat at the end of my leader and toss it into a thicket of branches from which no escape was possible. On those days, I walked away from the river in a funk, while the tag end of my tippet waved an ironic farewell from a high limb.

Then I met a wildlife rehabber. And she opened my eyes to another dimension of the problem. Monofilament was far more than an unsightly addition to the growing tapestry of riverbank litter. It was a deadly menace. In other words, monofilament kills, and so do hooks and lead shot sinkers…

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Every cyclist needs a seat bag to carry a few essential tools, a puncture-repair kit, and a spare tube. And what do you do with your old, careworn tubes when you’ve repaired them for the last time? Recycle them, of course. But one company has taken this humble idea to new lengths. Pedro’s USA makes elegant seat bags from recycled inner tubes. So you can carry your spare in a bag made from somebody else’s blown-out tube. How’s that for closing the circle? Clever, eh? I think so.

We love our bikes, right? And we never tire of looking at them. At least I don’t, and if I’m to judge from what others tell me, I’m not alone. So each Monday I’ll publish a bike-related picture. Most of the time it will be a photo, but don’t be surprised if a few drawings and paintings get added to the mix from time to time. I might even include a sculpture or two. (OK. A photo of a sculpture.) Anything, in short, that evokes the world on two wheels. And don’t be shy. If you have a picture you’d like to share, just email it to me. I’ll do the rest.

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In a dimly lit aisle at the local Walmart, a brilliant burst of orange caught my eye. Talk about serendipity! I’d been looking for an inexpensive reflective vest that I could don when cycling on overcast days—or during nighttime rides—and now I’d found it, in the guise of a Walls Workwear ANSI 2 mesh safety vest, generously embellished with 3M reflective tape over the shoulders and around the waist. It even came in a range of sizes, rather than being offered for sale as a single circus-tent-like garment, with the spurious (but ubiquitous) claim that “one size fits all.” And at USD9.00, I couldn’t quibble with the price.

Here it is laid out on a concrete sidewalk on a dark, overcast day:

It grabs the eye, doesn’t it? (No, I didn’t use a flash.) In fact, the reflectivity and color saturation all but overpowered my camera’s sensor. It shows up equally well on the road, too. But what about shady lanes bordered by lush greenery? No problem. The vest is equal to the challenge, as this demonstration shows:

I shot the left-hand photo in late afternoon under overcast skies. The right-hand shot was made with a flash, after the sun had dropped below the horizon. It shows how the vest looks in the headlights of an approaching car. Not bad, eh?

And that’s not all. The Walls vest is wonderfully lightweight, cool enough for hot days yet stretchy enough to fit over a fleece jersey when a summer night turns chill. It doesn’t take up much space in your bar bag, either— it’s no bigger than a softball when folded. Is there a downside? Yes. The hook-and-loop closure will snag the fabric if you’re not careful. But that’s a minor nuisance, not a major menace.

Still, I’ll probably replace the snag-prone patch with a tie sooner or later. It’s a simple task, even for a cack-handed seamstress like me. (Incidentally, you can get some idea of the fabric’s vibrant color by noting the luminous orange tint it imparts to my arm, despite being lit only by indirect light from an adjacent window.)

Anyway, I’m hooked. To be sure, some cyclists condemn safety vests and other “clown suits,” arguing that they send the wrong message, suggesting that cycling is dangerous, or that it’s not a “normal” activity. But cycling in the company of imperfectly guided missiles moving at four times your speed is a risky business, and I see nothing abnormal in adapting my wardrobe to reflect the objective dangers associated with a particular activity. After all, I wear a helmet when climbing and kayaking, a respirator when sanding, and goggles when grinding. I value my head, my lungs, and my eyes. Perfectly normal, that. So I’ll cheerfully part company with the fashion-first brigade here, too. When I’m riding on the road, common sense dictates I do what little I can to rouse dozy motorists from their stupor while they still have time to steer around me. The Walls vest fits the bill, and it’s only nine bucks. I’m worth at least that much, I think.

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