Light-Evening Landmark

Yesterday I visited my cat and family in Rochdale as I often do. Because the nights have finally drawn out enough for me to ride it before dark and the pleasant weather, I decided to ride the DL-1 rather than taking the Brompton on the train. Rather than suffer the perils of Oldham Road, I decided to take an alternative route along a popular rat-run (so popular in fact that the motorised traffic was travelling nice and slowly):

Once I reached Failsworth, I decided to use the canal for the remainder of the journey, it had been dry for a few days so the path would be passable at least.

When I reached the Ship Inn near Hopwood Hall College, I was perplexed to see a barrier had been put in place and a sign which read “Towpath Closed.” Behind the barrier was a broken bollard which had presumably been put there to suppress cargo-bike use on the towpath. In a blatant disregard for the authority of the sign I proceeded to ride along the towpath anyway. When I arrived near to the tunnel under the M62 I saw another barrier and sign, having encountered nothing in the closed section which warranted closing it whatsoever. Maybe we should try this approach on the motorways too.

Upon leaving Rochdale, I noticed that my lights weren’t working. Sadly this necessitated a train journey (although it was also starting to rain by then anyway). I assumed the problem was due to the shoddy job I had done extending the wire for the front lamp when I re-mounted it on the headset. When I returned home I decided to disassemble the front lamp and replace most of the wire, properly solder the connection between the two wires and use heat-shrink to protect the connection.

The innards of the Lumotec Retro

The original lamp wire was shortened and soldered to some fairly low-end speaker cable I had to hand

One interesting thing I discovered was that inside the B&M Lumotec Retro there is basically a complete standard B&M Lumotec lamp, attached by the same type of bracket which all of the B&M lamps I have seen use to attach to the various mounting options available. This suggests that it might be possible to house a better lamp such as a Lyt or a Cyo within the aesthetically-appropriate Retro shell at some point in the future.

The guts of the Lumotec Retro are essentially just a complete standard Lumotec lamp

After faffing about with the wire, I discovered that the actual cause of the problem was that there was a layer of filth on the contacts of the dynamo hub itself, and that my initial shoddy wiring was in fact fine.

The connections on the dynamo-hub after being cleaned with a screwdriver

Gratuitous shot of the cat who my desire to visit set in motion the entire series of events