Not a Lights Review

I have some photos to add to this post but for some reason wordpress is not co-operating this evening

I recently purchased some new bike lights having been persuaded by a colleague that my set up was pretty poor – yes I was legal but if I ever got caught in the dark I would not necessarily be safe.

Fortunately he also had some ideas about what sort of lights would make me relatively safe without spending vast amounts…

“Of course if you decide that you like cycling in the dark then you may want to upgrade”

Colleague 3 from some weeks ago (now my Guru) favours Exposure as does colleague 2 because they have a good “burn time” i.e. generally last for around 3 hours on max power, and are both powerful and robust. They have an internal battery so no wires or additional battery packs.  However you can he says end up spending several hundred pounds on one unit which at the end of the day is just a torch!

On the rear he uses a  Cateye LD1100  which he considers “about the best there is” and since it turned out to be cheaper than he had lead me to expect I went ahead and ordered one… I don’t want to take risks on the rear light. If I am going to be hit at night I suspect it is mostly likely to be from behind because someone hasn’t realised I am there so I have a catsye which I intend to mount quite high on the bike and a small one down by the drop outs.

Because I live out in the middle of nowhere with little street lighting I’ve opted for a budget bright light the  Brite-R® Uno II CREE XM-L T6 LED which gives me a lot of light for under £20.

However I was not particularly impressed by the quality as I had only just taken it out of the box when this happened.  Also there is a lot of faff involved as the battery  is separate and has to be detached and charged up inside with its own little charger so you end up with lots of wires and cables on the bike. However it can be mounted as a head torch or as a bike light on the front.

Now the reason that this is not a lights review…I haven’t used them yet. Not quite true I did use the Catseye in the dark when we went down the Stratford Greenway recently but the Cree I have only tried by walking down the road… which isn’t really the point, if I want to do that I can just take a torch with me.

I feel a bit embarrassed. Here am I 44 years old and too scared to go for a ride in the dark…. I have had these lights for almost a month you know (a month in real time – most blog posts I write a month later, this one happens to be real time for once)

I have recently been reading the blog of Bri at Bike Like Crazy… I feel even more embarrassed. Not only does she bike at night but bikes all through the winter at all hours of the day and night and weather conditions… with minimum journeys of 10 miles and here am I too scared to take a spin round the block as it were (4 miles).