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Mass Night Ride in Mountain View for Fireworks Show--Lighting Report
Apparently about a thousand other cyclists had the same idea of riding
the Stevens Creek Trail (Mountain View, CA) and the Shoreline Park Trail into Shoreline Park to see the fireworks being set off next to Shoreline Amphitheater. It was very impressive to see a line of hundreds of bicycle lights stretching for a mile or so down the trail (though nothing like the huge line of cars stuck exiting the parking lot). I've never seen that many bikes on the trail. Lots of kids riding at night too, some looked no more than six years old. While a few cyclists had no lights at all, I was pretty impressed with the quality of the front and rear lights I saw, most all of them were bright enough to illuminate the unlit and very dark trail. Very few toy lamps or dynamo lamps--it was either no lights at all or very bright lights. There was a large number of the easy-to-spot Cateye LD-1000/LD-1100 tail lamps, so apparently there are a lot of cyclists (at least in this area) that understand the difference between a drugstore LED flasher and a good LED flasher, and are willing to spend $25-40 on a flasher. I foolishly decided to try out a Union/Marwi dynamo powered light that I had just installed earlier in the day. This light was totally worthless on an unlit trail at 10 mph, but I had along a high power Fenix Cree LED flashlight (2AA) with a bicycle mount that I made. My kids and wife had the awesome Task Force 3W Cree LED flashlight (2C) from Lowe's ($30). This light rivals the DiNotte lights in term of brightness, and the beam is very good for riding, with sufficient peripheral illumination. This was very important on this ride since the multi-use path had a lot of pedestrians as well (can't they ban them?) that were all over the place. In terms of Cree LED lights, the simple Lowe's Taskforce flashlight was much brighter than the similarly Cree LED equipped Fenix L2DCE, partly because of the much larger reflector. I finally put my daughter in front of me so she could light the trail better. I think that if I want to use a dynamo light on unlit streets then I need to invest in a new wheel with a dynohub, and a SolidLight 1203D, but I cringe at the thought of spending $500 on lights. This was the first time my kids, 10 & 14, had been on a longish night ride (about 20 miles r/t from our house), and the 14 y.o. daughter-unit (who is actually much more athletic than the boy) was apprehensive about the whole idea (we've had a rash of fatal bike accidents in this area in recent months, though I don't think any were at night). Excellent fireworks show at Shoreline Park, much better than in Cupertino or at Marriott's Great America. On the way home we tried the new extension of the Stevens Creek Trail that goes under El Camino Real which then dumps you out on eastbound ECR, just at the entrance to southbound 85. Then of course a midnight stop at the famous Donut Wheel was required. Terrible donuts, but they never close. |
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