Bike Lights

  While I don't often ride my bicycle after dark, I think it's pretty useful to have a bike that's outfitted with lights.  This is especially beneficial if you commute on a bike.  Last year when I started riding to school a lot, I would occasionally find myself leaving my studies early so I could ride home before it got dark, or I would just ride home in the dark.  At that point I had a small single LED tail light, just so I was visible to cars.  Much of my commute at that time was light by streetlights, so being seen by approaching cars was really the only lighting I needed, though there were a few particularly dark nights where I'd be riding down one of the unlit stretches of road thinking, "gee I sure hope I don't hit something."  Occasionally I would remember to bring a headlamp to school, which worked quite well.

  After I decided to build the Trek as my do-it-all bike, I felt inclined one day to go get some lights I could permanently mount.  My original idea as to buy a high quality flashlight, like a Surefire or Fenix or something, and make up a mount for it, so I could have a good bike light as well as a really nice flashlight.  I briefly looked into that, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of super high tech flashlight information out there.  There's entire forums (like this one here) dedicated to this stuff, and the degree to which theses guys analyze flashlights is far beyond my capacity.

  So I went to EMS and bought myself what looked to be the best combo they had, a Princeton Tech Push headlight, and a Planet Bike "Blinky 7" taillight.  The Princeton tech was by far the best looking headlight they had, and from my minimal understanding of flashlight technology, seemed to be pretty decent too.  It takes three AAA batteries, pumps out 100 lumens (which I deducted was adequate for my somewhat limited night riding) and it has an advertised burn time of 63 hours, which seems crazy.  Here's the link to the Princeton Tec site.

  I decided to mount it on the fork, rather than the handlebars for a cleaner look, and it seemed to me to be more effective at illuminating the road when mounted lower on the bike.  It comes with a handlebar clamp with a slot/tab mechanism with sort of a quick release.  I took apart the mount, and attached the mounting slot to the right fork blade with a p-clamp that I had kicking around my toolbox.  It's high enough so that I can easily reach it from the saddle, and it mounted up pretty sturdily. As it's mounted now, the light is on it's side, compared the the way it should be mounted, but so far I don't see any issues.

      This light has gotten a lot of pretty lousy reviews regarding construction and durability, but I haven't had any problems so far.  I've been on a couple rides since mounting it, most of which involved dirt roads and being stuffed into the back of a station wagon, and the mount seems to be holding up fine.  Perhaps there's a benefit to mounting it sideways..

  Anyways, for the price I think it works great, so long as it holds up.  It's real bright for my needs, and it's got these neat windows along the sides that blink red just for additional visibility, a feature which can also be turned off to save battery life.  As far as modes go, it's got a bright, a less bright, and strobe, which I don't see myself using too often.  The way it's mounted casts a shadow of the tire, but it's tolerable, and the whole wheel is lit up so it looks pretty cool when it's spinning.  Mounting it on the left side may have been more effective, but I though I'd rather have the right side of the road more illuminated than the left.  As soon as I get myself a front rack, I'll mount it there.

 

  Taillights are a bit easier, and I chose the Planet Bike "Blinky 7" because I was fairly certain I'd read about it on several bike commuting blogs, forums of the like.  It's got a total of 7 red LEDs all pointed in different directions, and they all blink wildly.  It's quite effective and I'm wishing I had taken some night shots.  I might do that later just for fun.  My Rivendell Brand V seat bag has a nifty little strap to clip the light onto rather than fool with mounting on the seat-post or stay or something.  The bag is great by the way, maybe one of these days I'll do a little review on that, and I'd really like to get the accompanying handlebar bag.