Absinthe Black Light Indicator

While over at a neighbor's rural residence in the frozen hills last night, a few other guests were trying out his new "quad", a four wheel, wide tire, all-terrain vehicle in the two feet of fresh snow.

The neighbor said that the riders' enthusiasm for the quad was fuelled by a volatile liquid called Absinthe, a recent ritual he and his friends had acquired.

So he gave me a few shots of Absinthe and he showed me the controls on the quad, a go-cart with huge tires. I got on and felt like an immediate expert which he explained was a small side effect of the Absinthe.

I tore off into the adjacent wooded hillside, following faint tracks of the past riders until they disappeared, then I ended up on the edge of a cliff and had to lean to one side from stop from falling over as I inched across a narrow flat spot. Once I found a straightaway, I sped up, but it suddenly turned downhill and I started fishtailing as I shot along some bobsled type trough. In the heavy snowfall, I noticed that the headlight was starting to give me some sort of tunnel vision. The faster I went, the brighter the tunnel seemed to get until it was too bright to look straight ahead but then figures started to appear and looked familiar as I sped past them, then they became the faces of close friends and relatives reaching out to me, then they became religious figures in white robes pointing with sticks towards a pulsating ruby red traffic light.

That's when I pulled over and wrote down this idea. A black light or deep purple filtered headlight would minimize this tunnel effect. The beam would not collimate with this wavelength and would therefore display a more realistic wideangle view of the spectacle. It should be powered with a 50 watt xenon 30fps strobe to cut down the blur of the snow flakes as well.

When you drink, don't drive.