My training’s been plateauing lately – no special rides, just a hundred or so miles a week of normal riding.  On reason is that I’ve just had a busy schedule, including some activities at the Bike Kitchen, like a special fundraiser we held this past Saturday.

Every Second Saturday, the Kitchen holds a big fundraising party, with beer and bands and a good fun atmosphere.  Usually, the Kitchen keeps the proceeds, but they decided instead to donate the money to the SBK AIDS/LifeCycle team, including yours truly. My teammate Gina decided to put some art up for sale (and sold quite a few pieces!), and I decided to put my tech prowess – such as it is – to work, snaffling a bunch of reflectors and retrofitting them with high-intensity LEDs.

Since basic LEDs only require very simple circuits, these reflector lights were rather easy to make, if a bit time-consuming.  I started with twelve front reflectors and eight rear reflectors (I figured fronts woudl sell better than rears) and drilled three holes in each, countersunk to fit some special conical LED holders I’d found.  The LEDs and their holders were hot-glued together, then hot-glued into the drilled holes.  After that, I soldered it all together, connecting the LEDs to a battery pack and a simple resistor.

Two reflectors in the camera flash

The front and rear lights, showing the slim profile and the lights’ throw

I tried to match the LEDs and the design to the different needs of front and rear lights.  Rear lights only have the purpose of being seen, so I went with wide-angle LEDs and mounted them (mostly) off-kilter, to provide a wide range of visibility.  The front lights were a different matter: they need to illuminate the road and be visible to oncoming traffic, so I used a single wide-angle LED alongside two narrow beams, providing a longer throw.  These won’t outshine high-end commercial lights, but at $15 for a front light and $10 for a rear light (batteries not included), there’s no better lights on the market.