Windchill, Superflash, and Air-powered bike horns...

As I rode into work this morning a few random thoughts ran through my freezing mind, "...I love this new Superflash light, I wish I could mount my Airzound bike horn on my roadbike, and geez it's freezing this morning, I wonder what the wind chill is today?"  Below are my thought a little more fleshed out.

 

1) Planet Bike Superflash - These new little red flasher lights are super bright (I speculate that's why they call it the "Superflash").  If you are looking to increase your visibility at night on the road, pick up one or more of these things.  The Path Bike Shop has them at $24 retail.  Yes they are a little pricey, but are well worth the investment.  I've got two of them on the back of my backpack to compliment the two other lesser flashers: four total on my backside.

 

2) Air-zound air horn - This could be the loudest bike horn in existence.  You pump up the high pressure container which fits in your bottle cage, then mount the horn on your bars.  The air-powered horn is loud enough to scare drivers through a closed window: I've done it before.   However, I wish there were a way to mount it conveniently on a roadie-style drop bar.  On flat bars, you can mount it and blast away with the thumb activated switch.

 

3) How does one calculate "Wind Chill Factor?" - According to some weather services, it got down to 38 degrees yesterday morning.  Riding to work this morning at 5:30, it felt colder than yesterday (even my eyes were cold, which doesn't usually happen).  I checked on the national weather service and found the calculation for wind-chill factor.  It was updated in 2000 to make it more accurate.  Assuming it was 38 degrees and I was riding at about 20 MPH, with wind-chill, the perceived temp was about 28-degrees (YIKES!).  If you're interested, here's the formula: WC = 35.74+0.6215xTemp-35.75x(Velocity^0.16)+0.4275xTempxVelocity^0.16.  There's a minumum wind speed of 3 MPH.  Yes, I'm an engineer and these things are interesting to me.