After a grueling afternoon on the hot asphalt, we solved the daytime visibility issue yesterday. Bought a used Nissan Versa in a shade they call 'Red Alert.'

As I told my husband, "I wanted a red car, but not one that looks like a Christmas-tree ornament." However, the other choices were white (bad in winter) and an anemic blue which looked like conformity itself.

The red paid off this very afternoon. We were leaving the Hy-Vee when a woman in a big black car drove toward us while looking back over her shoulder. She spied our Red Alert car out of the corner of her eye, and her head whipped around so she looked where she was going. That's what it's all about.

But what about at night? Sometimes I come back from music-making at 11 pm through the tree-shrouded streets of Johnson County Kansas (you have to read about Johnson County to understand it). I'm gonna look into the LED lights. I think there's a whole world of sparkling rainbow color for cars which has been a closed book to us tasteful, eco, middle-class-guilt bearing folk.

The kind of people who have all earth tones in their homes.

I'll be back with a link. Trouble is, they show the lights, but they don't show what you do with them.