Let There Be Light

And the Randonneur said, “Let there be light.”
And there was lightAnd the light flowed forth from a light emitting diode.
And the light’s energy flowed from the SON*.
And the Randonneur saw the light, that it was good…

*Schmidt Original Nabendynamo

I’m finally entering the 21st century. Well, at least with regard to bike lights. I’ve been riding brevets with two Cateye HL-EL530 lights as headlights. I actually think these lights aren’t bad as far as cheap battery powered headlights go. They were able to get me through an SR series plus a 600k brevet that involved two full nights of riding over mountain passes. That’s something. But I have to admit that descending mountain passes in the middle of the night with those lights was one of the scarier things I’ve ever done. I was way out-riding my headlights at times and was lucky to have survived unscathed.

I decided that since it looks like I’m going to keep doing this Randonneuring thing--and I want to live to see my kids graduate from high school--I need to get a serious “lighting system” for my bike. And among Randonneurs, a serious lighting system generally begins with a Schmidt dynamo front hub. The brightest bike lights these days are battery powered, but the good battery powered lights don’t have the run time to survive a full night of riding without carrying heavy and expensive spare batteries or somehow recharging along the way. A dynamo hub powering an LED headlight comes pretty close to the light output of the battery systems and has the advantage of always being available, as long as you can keep the bike moving. Essentially your lights are powered by Fig Newtons and Gatorade instead of batteries.

So, I’m having a new front wheel built with a SON 28 hub by Peter White. Peter is the exclusive US distributor for Schmidt and his web site is the source of information on dynamo lighting systems not to mention a lot of other oddball niche bike gear. For a headlight, I ordered the Busch & Müller Lumotec IQ Cyo. I struggled a bit with this decision. The Schmidt Edelux and Supernova E3 are both very highly regarded but cost about twice as much as the B&M. After talking to Penny at Peter White Cycles and poring over every review I could find of these headlights, I decided the B&M light sounds like at least 95% of the light for 50% of the price. I also ordered a B&M taillight that can be mounted on the rear fender and wired into the dynamo.

Now I get to wait. Peter is going on vacation, so it’ll be a month or so before I get my wheel and lights. Stay tuned… once it arrives and I get everything installed, I’ll let you know how it all works.