Yeah, the new LEDs are a big increase in output, and if you want to ride safely at night you need the light.

Around here if you are looking for a good deal on a bike you go to the local thrift shop, because the ‘summer people’ donate them for a tax write-off and with a minimum of wrenching you can get 10 times the bike you could otherwise afford.

There are good lights for night riding if you have to do it, but most bikes don’t have them. Around here the bike riders depend on reflectors and the street lights, which is a terrible idea if you are riding on the side of the road. The drivers don’t see motorcycles, so you know that bicycles are invisible to them.

In several decades of cycling, I never discovered a truly safe way of riding at night among other cyclists. Once, for “fun,” I rode Houston’s annual Moonlight Bicycle Ramble, about a 25-mile (?) course mostly inside Loop 610 on the full moon nearest Halloween. Along with several tens of thousands of other riders, I arrived intact but swearing “never again” …