Santa was kind enough to bring me a fairly bright headlamp for Xmas. It was
really to allow me to chop wood in the dark without removing body parts, but
I figured it would pull double duty in my pre-dawn and after-dark commutes.
It's bright enough to see most road hazzards on an unlit street, but I
wouldn't consider tackling singetrack with it.
Anyways, it has a fixed, dual strap attachment, one strap around head, the
second over the top. The straps are fixed to a plate that is supposed to
sit against your forehead, and the light swivels from the plate. The
challenge came in figuring how to easily connect it to a helmet so it could
come off quickly.
The straps don't undo, so I couldn't thread them into helmet vents. I
tucked the "rear" strap under the back bulge of the helmet, but how to keep
the plate-mounted light at the front instead of sliding up over the dome of
the helmet to the rear? I was about to resort to creative zip ties, which
defeated my goal of quick removal.
As I thought about it, my wife offered me a glass of wine, and the light
came on, so to speak. I pilfered the wine cork, trimmed it to a tight vent
fit, and crammed it into the front center helmet vent with 1/2" sticking
out. The plate rests on the front of the helmet below the cork, held pretty
firmly in place. Voila.
What can I say? The trails here are deep mud or snow covered, it's been a
slow month. The last ride (Sunday) was two hours of cold, very wet trails,
two hours of cold, wet cleaning and lubing. Somehow the ratio of cleaning
to riding is making it a hard sell these days.
G