Jack's Electric Bicycle

Night Rider

I’ve covered the monthly meetings of the McKinleyville Community Services District Board of Directors for more than 12 years.

Although generally important, the meetings are often long, boring and downright tortuous.

About 30 to 40 minutes before each meeting, I develop a psychological condition I call the “Pre-MCSD Meeting Blues.” I fall into a deep funk at the prospect that I’m going to have to leave the comfy confines of my home and sit for hours on an uncomfortable plastic chair and listen to people drone on and on.

But on Wednesday I was upbeat. No blues at all.

While I wasn’t particularly jazzed about going to the meeting, I was looking forward to riding the e-bike there and testing out my new light set on the way home.

I travelled about 14 miles the afternoon before the meeting, but I pedaled a lot to conserve battery power. This allowed me to zap on over to the meeting at full power. I arrived a few minutes before 7 p.m. cool and refreshed. I brought the bike in the room and locked it up in the back.

And then the meeting began. We pledged our allegiance to a flag. The minutes from the prior meeting were approved. There was a discussion regarding who should pay to restock the restrooms at the local ball fields. It went on and on. There was just enough humor – some intentional, some not – to keep me entertained.

Several hours later, it was time to ride home. The streets of McKinleyville were dark and empty. I turned on my Bell “Dark Flyer” bicycle light set, which I purchased at Kmart earlier that day.

These lights looked top notch in the packaging, and cost a little over $20. That’s about twice as much as I had hoped to spend.

The front lamp, mounted on the handle bars, includes a halogen main beam and two LEDs. The halogen lamp can run for 5 1/2 hours on four AA batteries, while the LEDs can run 200 hours, according to the packaging. There’s a switch that allows various options – halogen only, halogen and LEDs, LEDs only and flashing LEDs.

There’s a rear lamp with red LEDs and various blinking options.

Both worked fine, but the plastic is cheap and the switches seem even cheaper. They’re kind of crappy and don’t inspire confidence.

Still, the beam was bright and lit my way home.

As someone stated at Wednesday’s meeting, McKinleyville is “pre-metro.” This is evident at night. Other than Central Avenue, there are few streetlights on my route home. It’s extremely dark.

It made me realize something – with a few exceptions, almost all of my nighttime bicycle riding took place in San Mateo, where there are streetlights on every corner. I don’t even recall using bicycle lights down there.

McKinleyville is entirely different. When you’re blasting down Hiller Road in the middle of the night, the only illumination comes from the bicycle lights. It goes from dark to darker on the Hammond Trail.

I was worried about cats, potholes and God-knows-what in the roadway. Would I see an obstacle before it was too late? That was questionable given the speed I was travelling.

Once I got off Central Avenue, I didn’t see a single soul Wednesday night. It was just me, my bike and the darkness of night.

It was exhilarating. I had the entire road to myself and plenty of battery power. It was full throttle all the way.

Next time I need to remember to wear gloves.

posted by Jack Durham @ 8:39 PM