I can’t have nice things
I broke another light today. Boring, I know, but I thought the circumstances were funny.
The state of Georgia requires, sensibly, that I use a white light visible from 300 feet in front of my bike or something like that when I ride at night. Summer doesn’t have me riding home in the dark much anymore, but who knows when I might do something different or stupid. I’ve gone through a handful of lights, which I believe I’ve chronicled here. My problem has always been the mount: I’ll hit a bump and the light will go flying off my handlebars and never work again. The last one I had was pretty nice in this regard: the mount seemed to hold the light much better (I was never afraid to leave it on when I rode the bus), and the light itself was pretty tough. I dropped it on the pavement a few times with no troubles other than a few scratches.
My last light was a Blackburn Quadsomething. It had four LEDs, the aforementioned sweet mount (with swivelling action and kung-fu grip), a waterproof seal and a nice battery life. That part about the sweet mount? The mount actually kind of sucks. It has a more solid grip than things I’ve used before once the light is actually in there, but it’s hard to get it in there good, and it’s hard to tell whether it is in there good until I hit a bump and it goes flying. I took the light off this weekend to clean the bike, and I did not put it back on good. It came flying off on Mansell this morning while I was trying to dodge cars passing me to turn right and looking for enough of a gap to cut across traffic and turn left, and I think it survived the impact. Then the Hummer behind me ran over it. There’s no obvious damage, other than a scuffed and now slightly cracked case, but it won’t turn on anymore.
I decided to spend the extra couple of bucks this time and bought a Cateye EL-5something. It’s supposed to be pretty nice. And when it’s all the way in the handlebar mount, it clicks.