Saturday, January 17, 2009

A Casualty of the Economy

The economy has tanked and it has taken my Shenandoah bike trip with it as a casualty of war. The trip is scrapped and the foot of snow outside leaves me unable to do any bike riding. At least the temp is up to 20 degrees now after being sub-zero for so many days this past week.

Alternate plans are still in the works. I might be able to do a smaller scale trip in NC near my folk's place. Lots of bike-friendly places there, or so I'm told. We'll see.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

New Bike Gear Bling

Happy New Year! After an unintentional hiatus from blog posting, I'm back! I received a couple of pieces of gear for my Trek this Christmas, as well as a road bike maintenance book, which will come in handy in preparation for my Skyline Drive outing this coming summer.

Because of tunnels through the mountains, its required to have lighting on your bike on the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. I don't even have reflectors on the Trek, so this is something I needed to fix. The answer? A couple new Cateye components. The first is the Cateye HL-EL530 (shown below) which is a 1500+ candle power LED headlight.



For the rear of the bike, I got a Cateye TL-LD1100 tail light. This is a 10-LED tail light with various flashing patterns for maximum visibility and long run time.



Its just too cold outside (for me) to go out and try mounting the lights on the bike -- that will come later in the spring or a warmer day later in the winter. The reviews on these items are pretty good, and although its not the same as riding in daylight, it should be good enough for my limited needs.