Short Story about rear reflectors

While riding on my first tour down the Pacific Coast Highway, I met a biker with a large triangular DOT slow vehicle sign on the back of his bike. It was stuck on a sheet of vinyl table cloth. It was flexible and wrapped over the rear of his gear on his touring bike. Now this was not the little ones sold at stores and used by many commercial touring groups, but the large commercial size seen on farm tractors and hay trailers. His reasoning, and I am no lawyer, if you are hit with a legal DOT slow vehicle sign on the back of your bike, any insurance claim was going to be much bigger than with just little flag. Sounded reasonable to me, so I spent a lot of time in hardware stores going down the coast looking for a slow vehicle sign that was not already glued to a large aluminum plate. Darned if I was going to hang that plate off the back of my bike. In the years since I have never found a sign that was not already stuck to an aluminum plate.

But he got me thinking, and shortly after meeting him, I did find an old, but looking new, fluorescent orange flag that had blown off a logging truck on the highway. I fastened it over the back of my bike, and ever since on all tours, I have had a bright orange cover over the back of my touring bike. Not a little one but a big one. I have actually had people in cars comment that they easily saw me down the road because of the orange, while many of the other touring bikes were not so visible.