Lighten up, man

As the planet has now ended its lurch to the south and its axis is slowly making its way back oop north, there’s a real sense that the days are starting to get just a little bit longer. By a couple of minutes every day, we are slowly leaving mid-winter behind and emerging, chrysalis like into a bold new future of daylight, rain and potholes!

There’s still quite a long way to go until we will be able to see 7pm without the aid of artificial light though – sometime toward the end of March that’ll be.

One thing the dark days do give you an opportunity to appreciate is how far bike lights have come. If my ride in this last week has been anything to go by, there were many stockings filled with lights during Christmas.

Today’s LEDs are basically superb aren't they?  I remember reading a review of a motorbike a few years back which had ditched its old filament bulb for an LED rear light – filament bulbs are still required by law for head lamps.  The review nailed it by captioning a photo of the new rear light with: The days were when head lights were not as bright.

A beautiful light bulb

Same with our cycle lights. I can’t remember the name of the first lights I ever had but they were massive grey things which used two size D batteries every half hour.  The front one had a circular clear lens while the rear was an oblong about the same size as a litre of orange juice.

There is no comparison between the old and new, the new ones perform better, look better, are lighter, brighter, last longer and make you irresistible to the opposite sex.