Tuesday, February 13, 2007

headphone cord wrapping tips

Whether you ride the bus, walk or ride a bike, mp3 players are a great addition to a carfree journey. Unless, that is, you are spending half the trip trying to untangle a rat's nest of headphone cord. Lifehacker posted a video from instructables on how to wind headphones so they don't get all tangled. As usual, the comments have a bunch of (possibly better) additional suggestions.

Most important is not to wind the cord too tight or bend it too much. You'll end up breaking the wire eventually.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Re: headphones while cycling

I have a vague recollection that this has been addressed previously somewhere on CarFreeAnnArbor. So apologies if this is a broken rec-, um, corrupted mp3 file.

But it's interesting how a web search turns up any number of admonishments against wearing headphones while cycling, some of which are actually codified in laws or campus rules.

Looking for studies demonstrating a correlation between headphone-wearing and bicycle accidents turned up just a single reference: "Several deaths of cyclists have been reported in Ontario that were linked directly to the use of stereo headphones."


And as plausible as these admonitions against headphone wearing are, John Allen's (presumably no relation to the founder of Ann Arbor) analysis of this intuition lends support to those who'd prefer to enjoy their tunes while riding.

Still, for myself, I opt to keep my ears completely open. I'm more confident without headphones. And a more confident rider is a safer rider. Also, I think many motorists subscribe to the theory that it's unsafe to cycle with headphones, and if I venture out with headphones on, I feel like it confirms for those motorists that cyclists aren't good citizens of the road--never mind that many of those same motorists will be talking on their cell phone, adjusting their radio, and slurping coffee, while leaning across the the passenger window to yell at the cyclist with earphones in their ears to 'Get outta the damn road!'