So I’m having to leave the house ridiculously early two days a week, at 6.45 am. And already it’s more or less pitch dark out when I get on the bike. Once we change the clocks it will be lighter, at least for a while, but at the moment illumination has become a critical issue for my morning commute. This was brought home to me this week when I was whacked in the face by a tree branch.
I have one of those fairly bright LED lights, but it’s really only able to shed light on a small patch of road in front of my bike. The rude, arborial slap in the face made it abundantly clear that I need something better.
It turns out that the world of lighting is a bit of a minefield. Or at least that it can be deeply bewildering. Last night I forsook my regular dealer to visit the mega outdoorsy emporium REI, which has a huge selection of lights. Confusingly huge.
What, for example is the difference between candlepower and wattage? Cat Eye sells a mean 1200 candlepower light, but other brands use watts as their measure of power. My experience with the REI staff confirmed my suspicion that it’s probably a bad idea to buy a bike there. The guy couldn’t answer my candlepower/wattage question (fair enough), but nor could he recommend anything for me to buy. Instead he took two of the lights that I was looking at, went to the back room, turned the lights off, and started repeatedly turning first one bike light on and then the other, concluding, finally, that “I guess that one’s brighter.” Um, thanks. He then told me that anything that wasn’t a $120 halogen light with a battery pack was really designed to allow you to be seen, rather than to see. Only the stuff that trail riders use in the pitch black could be of any help in lighting the road ahead.
A trip to my regular bike store was a little more helpful, in that the person I spoke to knew what he was talking about and had actual opinions. But their current range of lights was a bit limited, and he too confirmed that in order to really see in the dark I have to pony up well over a hundred bucks for a halogen light with a rechargeable battery. The one he really recommended was $245. Er, no thanks. I’ll take the tree branch to the head.
In the end I returned to REI and bought this, the Planet Bike “Super Spot”, which, contrary to the assertions of bike store personnel, claims to have been “specifically engineered to illuminate your path.” It has 1 watt of power (how many candles that compares to I’m really not sure), costs $30 and runs for 30 hours on four AA batteries. I’ll keep my smaller LED on as well for extra mega lightage. But this new light, at a first test, seems alarmingly bright.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be better off with a great big rechargeable halogen light. But I’m also not biking in the pitch dark. Even Atlanta has some street lighting. Hopefully, though, with one wide-beamed light pointing at the road (with, apparently, a 25 foot range) and another straight ahead, I can avoid being slapped in the face by a tree any time soon.
