Lights!

With less hours of daylight, lights for your bike become important.  They come in all sizes, colors and purposes.  There are lights;

To make you be seen which is my preference and I use this light combo to achieve that.

This set was a gift, it's made by Botranger and it's bright enough not only to be seen by others but it can even be a bit obnoxious, but at least cars and others will see me.  The switch can be set to low steady, high steady or the obnoxious insane strobe.  Both the front white light and the back red tail light have the steady or strobe choice.  Battery life is good in my estimation and this set has served my needs well.  I generally run the battery out sooner on the tail light because I have used it in daylight hours while riding on roads with higher traffic volumes.  The white light for the front installs on my handle bars in about 2 seconds.  The tail light clips onto my bike trunk bag or my shorts if I'm not using a trunk bag.   More information can be found at this link


To help you see which I think would be great if I was going to be touring in the evening hours and need a light to guide my path.  I usually don't set off at dusk so my light choices are for the event I get caught out at dusk or a bit later.  If I truly rode at night I'd want a light like the Planet Bike HID headlight, seen below.

 This style of light is more for you to be able to light up your path and the image at the right is taken from their website that gives a good representation of actual lighting produced by various watts of lights.  Lights of this style are available in 1/2 watt, 1 watt and 2 watts or more.  Clicking at this link will take you to their website and you can click on the various lights offered and see how much or how little they will light up your path and you can choose what is best for your style of riding.

The two kinds of lights above fall into the casual rider affordable category.  Headlamps for serious night riders are also available but instead of being in the $20-40 range for a set, they will run upwards of $100-200 and more,  I don't have examples of those.  It would be best to stop at your local bike shop and talk to the shop riders who often tend to ride at night when the shops are closed and out on trails that twist, turn and wind and serious lights are a must.

Then we run into a whole other category of novelty lights.  Novelty lights can be functional to help make you be seen by others, for fun and show, or a combination of both.  They can range from simple 3M reflective tape that can be attached to each spoke, inexpensive plastic LED light sleeves that clip onto spokes to full blown pieces of art that can be customizable, thematic and downright zany!  I've posted a video in the next post after this one and a link to their site for more information can be found here.  Use caution, they can cost up to $60 per wheel.  But imagine how the heads will turn if you show up for a group ride or nighttime parade with these beasts on your bike!

In addition, the newest helmet I bought has blinking side lights, they are small, flat and unobtrusive with an easy push button on/off.  They're small but the blinking stands out, especially in the dark.