I walked out the doors at work tonight at 5:30pm, but nevertheless it was already dark. It's been pretty cool the past few days and the nights, even cooler. I wasn't really planning on riding tonight, but when I got home at 6:15, I realized I had no excuse not to go. Fifteen minutes later the bike was ready and I was rolling onto the street.
The route I was taking is a 60-minute road ride on some hilly, but not mountainous terrain. I'm usually huffin' & puffin' on the climbs and hitting somewhere around 45mph on the descents. So 30 minutes into the ride, the green light on my $300 bike light starts to blink. Two minutes later, boom! The light goes out completely. I wasn't sure how charged the battery was when I started the ride, but I was sure such an advanced lighting system would give me more than a two-minute warning that it's about to crap out. Obviously, I had never pushed it to it's limit before. The light burns for 3 hours on full power, so needless to say, I don't recharge it at the end of every 60-minute ride.
The hillsides of Newbury Park are rather dark and can be a bit sketchy at 40mph in the pitch black. In a few spots, like where I took this picture, neighborhood street light illuminate the road, but for the most part, I was on my own. It was a long, nerve-racking ride home to say the least.
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