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Lights
The After-Dark Revolution Joe Kenwright discovers a new world of night time trail riding that is no longer so scary…. The days when an after-work cycling routine could be destroyed by delays at Despite the array of battery-powered lights sitting in my bike parts bin, each one claiming to be better than the last, I gave up on cycling in the dark two years ago. It wasn’t the many close encounters with wombats in Westerfolds Park, nor the huge kangaroos near Petty’s Orchard (some are now as big and solid as a cow) nor even the invisible walkers beside the Eastern Freeway. It was the metre long stick across the path near the Burke Rd bridge that twitched just in time for me to avoid what proved to be a tiger snake. Affordable lights even two years ago just didn’t have the spread or intensity to avoid any of these at a worthwhile pace. The arrival of the CygoLite Rover II dual LED system at Ivanhoe Cycles for just over $200 changed all that. Even on the Low setting, its even spread of light was more like a decent car headlight and kept me on my bike through the depths of winter this year including many midnight rides. It was so good that I found myself throwing my bike in the car on every interstate trip. Nothing wipes away the cobwebs of the road faster than a dusk ride before dinner. The Rover II system generates enough light to negotiate a strange route up to 50km then find your way home again as easy as if you were in a car. Then CygoLite’s latest TridenX LED system came along. Normally retailing for $589, Ivanhoe Cycling sell this premium system for around 50 per cent more than the Rover II. It’s one of the few cycling accessories where the law of diminishing returns does not apply. You get more than 50 per cent extra in performance and features. The first thing you notice is the battery pack. Little bigger than a mobile phone, it velcro-straps to your bike’s head stem and provides at least the same capacity as the Rover II system without having to surrender a water bottle cage to carry it. It weighs next to nothing and requires only a short lead to the light unit which doesn’t have to be plumbed into the bike. The whole system can be shifted from bike to bike in a matter of seconds. The light unit itself is little bigger than the Rover II and tucks in level with the handlebars where it won’t catch the wind. There is a helmet-mounting system but it pumps out so much light that constant scanning of the surroundings is no longer a must. It’s because the alloy light casing houses three instead of two lenses which stay on in all modes. CygoLite’s Cross-Fire technology then disperses the light in an even spread ahead and to the sides. Unlike those lights that rely on powerful single beams that create an intense hot spot in front of your bike which then stops your eyes from seeing beyond the boundaries, the spread of the TridenX beams gently fades off at the extremities. Because the Triden X allows you to trade-off light performance for battery life, you should be able to dial up enough light at the perimeters to pick up a kangaroo or snake or a broken bottle at a daylight riding pace when needed. Even though the beam is generated by three lenses, they are so well integrated that there is no separation, no variations in intensity and no shadows that could cause you to ignore a dark object. If only all the latest car headlights were this good. I tested the lightweight Li-Ion battery which takes four hours to charge, fully-drained. A full charge will last 2.5 hours on the High Brightness setting which you would use only in extreme conditions when it is so intense. The Medium-High setting boosts running time to 3.5 hours but again, it is more than you need for most bike paths. Medium-Low gives you 5 hours while Low, which is still more effective than all of the battery-powered single units I have purchased over the years, will take 12 hours to drain the battery. Depending on the ambient light, I would rather ride on the two Low settings when they provide similar reach to the brighter settings but allow your eyes to see more in the darkness beyond the light. There are several flash modes that boost battery life up to 28 hours while the Walking mode, about as good as an average torch, can last up to 60 hours. This is a vital back-up feature if you have to fix a puncture. So what is there not to like? In an effort to keep the TridenX simple, CygoLite has built a flashing battery indicator into its main light mode indicator which glows in pale blue. If you don’t learn what each sequence of flashing means and then keep an eye on it over the course of several days, you can suddenly find yourself without light. The battery indicator starts as a flicker on full charge but then moves to a fast flash when there is less than an hour left. It is a subtle shift that is easy to miss. A slow flash indicates that you have 20 minutes left. When the headlight starts flashing of its own accord, it’s 20 seconds before “lights out”. Even if the application needs some tweaking, the logic behind it is still clever. By shifting the light to a less draining mode when the slow flash kicks in, the indicator will go back to a flicker if you have cut consumption enough. With 20 minutes to go on Medium-Low, I have been able to get home comfortably on Low over an hour later. It’s more of a battery power management indicator if used properly but I would rather see a red, amber and green light system covering the three levels of battery charge. Taking your eyes off a trail during a night-time ride to monitor a rate of flashing is not that clever. Still, it would not be enough to stop me from entering the wonderful new world of cycling that this system opens up. As more riders tune into these new lighting systems, the trails are no longer as dark and lonely as they once were. The only thing that I didn’t reckon on was how cold it can get on a clear spring night even compared to most winter nights but that’s another story.
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