Carpe Diem

I rode my Lucky Greek permanent on Friday night. The weather all day was bad, with cold winds and rain all afternoon. While rain is not necessarily a reason not to ride, it was threatening to snow at home and I was only driving the Prius so for a while I thought I wasn't going to ride.

Finally, about 4pm the weather eased up. The rain almost stopped and the temperature started to rise. I decided to take a chance and started my ride at 5pm.

I was testing my new IXON IQ Premium LED Headlight. It has the optics of a high-end dynamo light but it takes batteries. Although I like my Cygolight front lights, they have a perfectly round beam pattern that smoothly brightens to the center. After using old halogen Cateye lights for years which have weird, spotty beam patterns I thought the round, smooth Cygolights were much better.

But the problem is that you really want to top edge of the bright center on the horizon to get the best illumination. When you do that you illuminate the tops of trees and dazzle low-flying pilots. If you tilt the beam down to waste less light the bright spot is too near and washes out the rest of the road.

The beam pattern of a good bicycle front light pushes most of the light to the top of the beam and has a distinct horizontal cutoff. You should read this article from Peter White - it has great comparative photographs.

I was impressed by the light - it makes a perfect partner with my Luxos U dynamo light. I was hoping to take some photographs and write a review but the pavement was wet so you couldn't get a good feel for how good the light is. That review will have to wait.

Back to the ride - I had to be a little careful because the pavement was wet from the storm and I got rained on a few times but it was no big deal. The temperature was a perfect 60F and the wind was lighter than usual. I've been eating a little heavier at the turn around point lately and it has certainly improved my strength on the return trip. I had my usual four hour ride time plus 20 minutes eating.

I was absolutely thrilled to be able to ride after thinking I would be rained/snowed out. In some way it made the ride better to know that I almost didn't ride.