So, about a decade or so ago, give or take a few years – I met a guy – Kelsey – he was a phd chemist, he was a brillant guy, and a great biker… He showed up at my house to do some night time bike riding with me and a few others – (right out my back door on Page Road -into what’s known now as the Burlington Landlocked forest.)  We’d head out and ride the trails at night for a few hours – you learn to ride over things you would normally avoid – Baby-heads, you float, not avoid… stuff like that.   Now Kelsey had cut a flashlight in half, and strapped a lead acid 12 volt battery to his back.  We quickly became R&D adventurers in the night time in our off road riding cadre.  So, as the next few years in the early 90’s  quickly accumulated, I enlisted a machinist friend to create some CNC’d housings, a lightweight mount and decided to invent NiMH batteries in the Bicycle space – ( at the time Night rider & Night sun were the only players – and battery technology was NiCads. ) – Using battery technology from a company I worked for; VST Technologies, who were Apple developers – we developed cigarette pack size battery packs.  Way ahead of the curve.  (We also R&D’d Metal Halide lights that were just in R&D and we started using those brutes, but the reliability was pretty bad.  Shit would fail in the middle of a white knuckle turn. Not good. )  So – lots of real world testing led us to these pretty sick lights, before the internet – we had Usenet.  and we sold a fair amount of these wonderful lights, to police teams, professors who lost drivers licenses and needed high power lights, 24 hour racers who needed a system that combined a helmet mounted spot with a broad beam handle bar system.. ( Trust me – you need both when you hammer in the woods… )     But, wait.  Back the the rides…

A little history on the Burlington Landlocked forest… in fact the in the Burlington Landlocked forest – was created because Burlington had plans to sell the land to a developer – (Now – I owned land that backed up to the now landlocked forest. and the herd of deers who live back there, had visited for probably generations…would visit my back yard every fall – and eat all the apples and pears that fell to the ground off my trees. Kelsy, Jay, myself and a few other invites would ride and ride the trails – which some were old colonial roads before Rt 3 bisected them.)  So forward a few years after I sold my house…..  To stop the pending development, Bedford decided to put a conservation buffer around the town borders, effecting saying FU to Burlington’s idea of turning this land into a golf course and another technology park.)   The resulting years have seen a lot of changes – lots for the positive – Punch and Judeywere the first NEMBA folks who went and built some pretty sick trails and jumps and obstacles I did not dare to attempt.  Now – I visited the land about a month ago, on a hot July afternoon – and thankfully – most of the trails are still there – and in fact – dedicated trail members of NEMBA have built a bunch of new trails too.

But my heart lays in the excitement of riding at night in the woods, coming around a corner and riding thru a beam of light.  Often I’ll ride alone – for the solitude and challenge ( altho’ I’ve learned to carry a first aid kid and a cell phone… )

So fast forward to 2014../15  – I just found an LED bulb that purportedly puts out the rough equal of 70 watts – and the amp draw is far less than a halogen bulb – so with a great powerful battery – I am expecting 3 to 4 hours of incredible lighting down these trails that I love so much…

Bring on the night