From Mars...

Okay, as history has it, Edison perfected the first incandescent electric light bulb sometime in 1879, improving on earlier light bulb designs that had been around for 50 years. Some twenty-one years later, Edison, having earlier sold his soul to Old Nick a la Robert Johnson in exchange for eternal notoriety, came up with the first alkaline storage battery, the precursor to today’s expensive, nonrechargeable landfill landmines.

In 1896, Louis Jackson (like Edison, possessed of a particular intellectual fecundity), founder of the Acme Electric Lamp Company, applied for and received a patent for his Portable Lamp, a dry cell battery powered light. Perhaps in reaction to the frenetic (if ephemeral) clamor for bikes that mysteriously took root in the 1890s, Jackson’s light came equipped with a bracket for mounting it to a bicycle. Jackson’s creation eventually found its way into the willing hands of the Eveready company, which began mass-producing (and improving) the lamps shortly thereafter.

Flash forward a century to the bike lights available to us today. Let’s take a little look at one example of more than a hundred years of bike light evolution and see what the captains of commodity have cooked up for us in the form of the Blackburn Mars 3.0 tail light.

Mars. As in Roman God of War. Son of Jupiter and Juno. Eager deflowerer of vestal Ilia. Father to those fratricidal, lupine-teat sucking twins, Romulus and Remus. Arguably the most revered deity in the Roman pantheon. A real Renaissance ma—...uh...god. You get the picture: this eponymous light has got to kick some heavy ass; maybe it can even blind those who would dare gaze upon it, the way a glimpse of the Gorgons or a sideways glance at Sodom and Gomorra could turn one to stone or salt. (Of course, the myopic marketing mavins at Blackburn likely had in mind only a planetary allusion.)

So, how does it work? In two words: good enough. It has several blinky modes powered by two AAA batteries, orange lights pointing out from either side, a decent clip for mounting it on saddlebag loops, and a nice, soft on/off button that is pretty easy to locate and operate with one hand and no eyes. So yeah, it functions fine. Now on to the negatives.

One immediate downside is the price, especially given that the Mars doesn’t seem to be any brighter than lights costing half as much. Okay, it has the side-mounted caution lights, but really, by the time a driver notices these, he's already tallying up the cost of a punctured car grill and trying to remember whether he sent a greeting card to his legal counsel last Christmas. And additional bulbs (seven LEDs!) mean shorter battery life, my second complaint with the Mars.

But the third complaint really takes the cake. It’s one of those things that only the most misanthropic of designers—one who can’t possibly ride at night—could have brainstormed. The aforementioned energy-eating propensity of this light means that battery changes are a frequent phenomenon. Recognizing this, the innovative folks at Blackburn decided to dispense with the overly complicated slot found on competitors' models whereby the edge of a dime or a knife blade or a thumbnail is used to sort of gaston apart the two halves of the light. Instead, they put their best minds together and came up with a really progressive method for securing/removing the Mars 3.0 tail light cover: three tiny Phillips head screws.

Three tiny, fully detachable Phillips head screws.

Three tiny, black (the color of night, the color of asphalt, the color of the devil's heart), fully detachable Phillips head screws.

Now, if you were a designer employed by Blackburn, and you suffered the sudden epiphany that a cyclist might need to replace spent batteries at night (that dark portion of the day when lights are actually used), somewhere out on a lampless road, well, it should occur to you that a return trip to the drawing board is warranted before you unleash Mars on an unwary cycling public.

Perhaps a better name would have been Achilles...

BIAOA* Rating: Not likely

(*=Buy It All Over Again)

Wine, Advocacy, Beer, Affinity...

Four words that pretty much sum up the little holiday shindig the fine folks of WABA put on last Thursday evening in the tight quarters on the third floor of an unassuming office building on Connecticut Avenue, NW.

I biked there—tracing part of my usual commuter route—with an empty stomach and no idea of what kind of people I'd meet. For no valid reason, I had the impression that the place would be packed with NIMBY yuppie types, prefigured by an array of resplendent Litespeeds triple u-locked in the foyer. Shit, I don't know, preconceptions encroach no matter how much you try to guard against them and I guess I just figured that, the historical gravity of unions and solidarity notwithstanding, any alliance of cyclists operating out of Chocolate City had to be a bit on the soft side. Not true.

I arrived close to 7:00 and locked up at one of four WABA-supplied, inverted u-stands sprouting from the pavement just outside the door. The sidewalks were pulsing with people trucking through town, enjoying the abnormally warm temps brought on, no doubt, with the help of that schoolyard bully to the bicycle, examples of which zoomed by indifferently, taillights all aglow with accidental holiday spirit.

I entered the building and hiked up to the third floor, where two adjacent rooms separated by a short hallway were humming with cyclists, some dressed for the part, some not. Saw beer in a few hands, and made out a lone cooler in the corner of one room. Made my way over amid random introductions, past the snack table, grabbed a Wild Goose Winter Ale (tasty!), and proceeded to chat it up on the obvious topic with one of the directors of WABA. Amid the conversation, I took in the new headquarters. Cycling memorabilia everywhere. A couple bikes adorned the walls, bedecked in twinkling lights. One of them was a nice IF fixie that belongs to WABA Executive Director Eric Gilliland, an incongruously young and unassuming guy with an equally incongruous penchant for tobacco, or so it would seem. Beyond the bikes, the open windows gave way to Connecticut Avenue in the front—the city writhing in all directions with traffic—and in the back, to the shadow-soaked roofs and walls of surrounding buildings, where fire escapes slipped away overhead into the cool night sky.

About ten minutes after I arrived, King Blog walked in, unmistakable at well over six feet and sporting a Dirt Rag woolie. Gwadzi quickly worked the crowd, engaging people with the speed and ease of a weathered politician. We hung out in our respective impromptu cliques for about 15 minutes before we ended up introducing ourselves. We talked for a while about bikes and racing and single speeds and fixies, our mutual friends and the whole blog thing. Gwadzilla was hitting the red wine with mean intent; meanwhile I had discovered the cooler of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the next room. Beers begat beers and it wasn't long before I was feeling a nice warm buzz taking over, suffusing the road-weary muscles in my legs and generally taking advantage of my otherwise empty stomach. We talked on, mostly about off-road fixed gear riding (Gwadzi thought it odd that anyone other than elite riders—the fast and the skilled—would bother with it), but also about other bike-related topics interjected by partygoers who occasionally entered the conversation.

Later in the evening, I found myself hanging out with S— (ed. note: name removed by request), WABA's Membership and Development Manager, who jokingly summed up her profession by saying “my job is to get money from people.” S— has a Masters in English, so there was a natural affinity there. We talked bikes and books for a good part of the evening—there was mention of Debord in there somewhere, and, of course, Nabokov (the usual plugs when feigning erudition) and, from her, John Berryman and The Dream Songs (wow, two suicides in that tight little list)—hanging out near an open window for a glimpse of late night cyclists brave enough to challenge the nonstop motorized frenzy that is Connecticut Avenue, and doing our part to make sure there were no liquid leftovers come time to leave. In the meantime, Gwadzilla had managed to cadge a pair of WABA socks for each of us from Eric—shwag earned, presumably, for joining WABA two seconds after RVSPing for the party that afternoon. Eric had been kind enough earlier to pedal out for more beer, slipping back in with a six of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for the degenerates still hanging around for one last cold one. The sounds of Jawbreaker's Boxcar filled the room, and I felt all right.

Time rolled on on skinny tires. More than two hours after the scheduled "end" of the party, we all shuffled out to our bikes to head home. Gwadzilla had departed a little while before, saying he'd already pushed his play time one hour past his self-imposed limit. By my admittedly unreliable accounting, he'd managed to kill enough red wine to glut Bacchus himself. Then again, he's a big dude.

Outside, the night air was brisk, but by no means frigid, especially for this time of year. I unhitched my bike and hooked up my light. Meanwhile, S— saddled up, having agreed to shepherd me to M Street. She took the curb cut down onto Florida Avenue; me, well, I hopped the curb in pursuit, landing a few seconds behind her and a few yards in front of an oncoming car that clearly had the right of way. A blast of the horn, a burst of nervous laughter from me, and we were off, pedaling faster than we had a right to down Connecticut Avenue.

It wasn't long before we arrived at M Street. We said our goodbyes, and a few blocks up M it occurred to me that food wouldn't be a horrible idea, especially since Pizzeria Paradiso was looming up ahead on the left like a godsend. Fifteen minutes before the oven was cued to shut down, I stumbled in and made for the Birreria in the basement. Downstairs, I looked around and recognized no one. No matter, it's late, my stomach's empty, my blood is full, and it's the kind of clean, well-lighted place that would make Hemingway gush in his beer.

I asked about food and was told that there was still time. As I was about to order an Atomica pizza, my eye caught a black tap handle. Unibroue. Chambly Noire. Damn. I assayed the level of alcohol surging through my veins, figured what the hell, and ordered a glass, along with the pizza. One more couldn't hurt, right? The liver is a very forgiving organ.

Nursed the Noire (damn fine!), ate the pie, and was told that it was last call. The bartender offered to buy me another round, and somehow the Ghost of Workday Future appeared and gave me a little lecture on hangovers and sleep loss and the like: for the first time in my life, I turned down good beer. I gathered my stuff, thanked the 'keep, headed up the stairs, and made it out to the bike. Once in the saddle, everything pulled together nicely, and I rolled with the dwindling traffic, catching a rare green light onto Key Bridge. From there it was up through Rosslyn and Clarendon and Ballston, where I paused long enough on Fairfax Drive to snap a shot of what looked like a diminutive enchanted forest, a spectral copse of brilliant cobalt glimmering in the midnight darkness. Once home, I fell into bed and slept like the dead. With only five hours of sleep left on the clock and a ten mile ride into work after that, it was going to be a rough Friday.

Blog Barkin'...

If you ride in the DC-Metro area and don't know about the Wash Cycle blog, you are really missing out on a great source of local cycling information, particularly regarding road riding and commuting. Honestly, I don't know how this guy stays on top of the many political, economic, and social goings-on that affect skinny tire cycling in this congested little part of the country, but I do know that I'm glad he does. Well-written and well-researched, check it out and be informed.

Fixed in Time...

Six Day Bicycle Race documentary showing tonight at the Arlington Cinema 'n' Drafthouse.

Jazz Age hardcore—a time when cycling ruled the sports world and a bowl of oatmeal with a cup of joe were about as close to performance enhancing drugs as you could get.

Here's your chance to see the early greats who have since passed into spectral obscurity, and to down some drafts while you watch 'em draft.

Interested locals should avoid embarassment and pedal there!