Bike lights

Oh man. So much to do upon returning to town. Not the least of which includes getting in to the lab and to work on everything I put on the back burner before I left for this trip. Phew. I should also post an update on the garden. There are melons in the front! T did a great job of taking care of all of the plants. It makes me so happy to come back to a house with a happy cat (as much as an emo kitty can be happy) and a happy garden, where I know the effort of caring for everything hasn't been overwhelmingly burdensome for the caregiver. I gave him some chocolates and am going to sew up some curtains for him, in return - it's too easy to peep into his room from the front yard, and Luna the dog is proving to be too good at smashing through window blinds.

I woke up bright and early this morning with jet lag, thinking about things that need to get done and lists that need to get written. One of the things at the top of the list is a new headlight for the Jolly Roger. I'm so excited about the generator hub and wheel on my new road bike, which makes me tempted to look into a similar setup for the Jolly Roger. At the same time, I'm experiencing a cascade of battery-operated bike headlight failures. scrottie gave me a CygoLite a while back, but they're designed to mount on a bicycle's handlebars. That doesn't quite work with the Jolly Roger's front basket (the basket obscures a critical part of the beam), so I settled for mounting the light sideways on the front fork instead. It produced a nice beam, but I believe a combination of the extra vibrations on the fork and of water getting into the light are causing failures: it spontaneously turns itself on, thus draining its battery. Headlights with dead batteries aren't especially useful.

So, to supplement the CygoLite, I've also had a Planet Bike "Blaze" headlight mounted on the handlebars. I mostly treat it as a running light - it's visible from the sides, and provides a reasonable beam for riding around in the city. It also operates on rechargeable AA batteries, which means that if I'm in a pinch or riding all the way through the night, I can swap out batteries with replacements. Last time S and I checked, it wasn't possible to get a replacement lithium-ion battery for the CygoLite (though I suspect that will have changed). The annoying thing about the Blaze, though, is that just a month or two after I bought it, the plastic housing that clips the light to the handlebar mount cracked. I dealt with that by attaching it with a big rubber band (Cartel band), but on jarring surfaces it will still work loose, annoyingly.

I've also had a big Cateye light kicking around, that I haven't been using lately because it requires 4 AA batteries (rather than two) and has one of the worst handlebar mounts ever, involving a plastic dial that often wedges up.

As I mentioned in a previous post, at some point I lost the battery housing for the Blaze, so I pulled out this old Cateye light to see about putting it to use while I work out what I want to do for bike lighting. I finally discovered that I could take apart its handlebar mount to swap out the annoying wedgie piece, but after all was said and done, the light appears to have suffered from some sort of catastrophic electrical failure, as it fails to light up.

So! All of this means that I FINALLY get to shop for a better headlight. I am so happy about this, as I have a good idea of what I want. First, I'll use this mounting system. Then, I'll get a flashlight-style light to go in it - one with metal housing (take that, plastic!). The glorious benefit of this system is that if one part breaks, I can replace it, without having to buy the entire thing all over again.

While I wait for that to arrive, I'm using this horrible, cheap plastic headlight that someone gave to me. It does the job, but barely, and takes 3 AAA batteries. Seriously, three batteries? Who does that?

Now the only question is, what should I do with this broken hunk of Cateye plastic and with the head of the Blaze? Stupid plastic junk.