Gadget man strikes again
So, now that THE DARK has arrived, thoughts of every night-riding Northwest cyclist turn to “seeing and being seen”.
There are a gazillion products out there to light your bike, or light up what you are pointing your bike at. I’ve pretty much got the “pointing-at” part covered with my Niterider HID headlight/flamethrower. “Being seen” is the trick when you are riding the roads at night.
I’ve got the usual blinking red lights in the back, but I like to be seen from the side. I’ve used blinking LED’s on the valve stems of my wheels, and even blinking holiday lights all over the bike. I’m always a sucker for the latest gadget, however, so when I saw these “ground-effects” type lights on bikes, I knew I’d have to have one sooner or later.
The problem is that complete units (marketed to cyclists) can run for as much as $120. I’ve found a few posts on the internet about how to do this yourself, for about $10.
It’s crude, not even close to waterproof, nor is the power supply integrated with my other light (which adds the weight of another battery system). But, man, it was cool riding around Kent and Auburn with this bad-boy lit up last night.
I really need to streamline my accesories, however, because this bike is starting to weigh a ton.
As a post-script, have you noticed that cyclists will buy every kind of light, blinker, and reflective sidewall tire… I even know fellows that have ordered special reflective tape and meticulously applied it to the rims of their wheels in order to increase lateral visibility at night. These are also the cyclists that, when the buy a new bike, immediately remove the reflectors that were installed on the spokes of those same wheels because they aren’t cool. I’m tempted to go to my local bike shop, and ask them for every spoke reflector they’ve removed at customer request, and hang them on my bike.
But then my bike would be up to 2 tons. Nevermind.
Tags: Cycling, lighting, night_riding
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October 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am
So, I am impressed with the application of said bits and the final outcome seems to have surpassed your initial intent. That’s a good thing! I’m curious if you have had a chance to see what sort of run or burn time you are able to achieve with the current battery set up. I’m also confident that I can help you with the weatherproofing of said PSL and possible battery pack integration if you so desire. BUT that would lessen the weight/tonnage factor of winter bike. My commuter is heavy too, but you know what, ride ‘em hard and what you don’t see in average speed and distance, you’ll see in fitness gains and plain old base miles bonus.