Saturday 5 December 2009

Ever since reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I've wanted a portable Somebody Else's Problem field. The practical advantages of unobtrusive invisibility for someone who does a lot of sneaking around and pitching tents where he shouldn't are fairly obvious.

If only I'd known all these years about the inherent irony of High Visibility.
The effect is identical to an SEP field, people can see you, they don't trip over you or anything, they just assume if you're wearing any kind of flourescent green vest that whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, you're meant to be doing it.
I've walked into festivals, directed traffic, painted over billboards, and just the other day; stole a bike.

I say stole. The way the solarflower is shaping up, the majority of materials are coming from old bikes. And usually this is a good thing as they can be found just about anywhere. But not really in Malaga. In fact the only one I managed to locate was an obviously abandoned and half missing scrap of a thing securely locked to a fence on a busy street by the university. So, day before last, round noon, I grabbed my hacksaw and an old cycling green hi-viz vest, and cut the bastard loose.

At least fifty people saw me do it. No one batted an eye. They were probably glad the council was finally removing the thing.



And there's even a version for my tent:

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