They’re called generator lights. I found a couple here and here. The cool ones now-a-days (and maybe back then) have all of the electrical stuff stored in the hub of the wheel, as in this. Installing generator hubs is definitely something you want a bike shop to do though.
Because compared to a modern battery light they are heavy, they are complicated, they are unreliable and they stop when you do so you can’t be seen well when sitting at an intersection.
For all you complaining about sore butts, the only solution is a hard seat.
Seriously.
But all of that is ok-I want it half for nostalgia and half because I really don’t need a bike light. I’m not out much after dark. Yes, I need a life. 
I don’t remember them being heavy at all. I remember my finger getting snagged a few times when the thingy went against the wheel (I actually never had one. But the cool boys did and I soooo wanted one --of the lights, that is. 
).
Dr Love–those are more complicated than I remember, but it’s the same principle. Thanks!
I did - but the bike store person was a girl, so I don’t think that was it. 
Really, I feel I got excellent service, and the bike they sold me is probably the bike I need. Maybe I’ll even want that bike in a couple years once I’ve gotten back into riding like I did when I was ten. I just don’t like it and never rode it.
It kind of seems like there’s a service gap between buying a Huffy for your kid at a big box store and buying a ten thousand dollar racing bike. The bike stores should be filling the gap but I don’t feel like they are. I mean, I did a lot of research. (I asked you guys and you guys told me to get a hybrid!) The thing is, though - I really hadn’t been on one on 20 years. So when I tried it at the store I could barely ride the thing, let alone determine whether it was the bike for me! I know I’m not at all the only one in this situation - gas is getting expensive, I’m not getting any skinnier, etc., and you simply cannot figure out the bike you need from reading because reading is very different from putting your slightly pudgy ass on the seat.
When buying gear for your new bike don’t forget the handlebar tassels. And maybe a thingy for the back wheel so it will make that ticka ticka ticka sound as you ride. 
You bought a thingy? We used playing cards!
My boyfriend has opened a camera shop and tells me there’s this cyclist thing where they race to various stores and such and I guess to “prove” they did each stage (he was kind of vague on the details) each store has some sort of card made up for this thing that they pin to their wheels, so I guess the people who are doing really well make a lot of noise. Anyway, because it’s a camera shop, they’ve decided to take Polaroids of each cyclist who comes through and brand them with the store’s logo and have that be their card. I think that’s just the cutest idea.
I could never figure out how to attach the playing cards so they made noise.
With a wooden clothes pin.
Me neither. And thingy is a perfectly good word! I use it often… as can be noted in this thread alone. 
I agree re the service gap. I remember thinking, all the while the young guy was extolling the virtues of this or that many geared/bells and whistles bikes, gee–I only really need maybe three speeds. I always had boy bikes (I was told by older sibs that boy’s bikes were “better balanced”–whatever the hell that may mean. I bought into it and had boy’s Varsity Schwinn’s etc), and the girl bikes were oh, SO ugly, I bought what I think is either a unisex bike or at least a transgendered one. Here it is:
eleanorsbike except mine is blue and gray.
What I really wanted (and did not see–this was 2 years ago) is this:
the ones I saw that were similar to the Lime model above (the 3 speed) were hideous–horrible paint jobs and they weren’t any cheaper! So, I have what I have. I think I look silly all propped up on this on and off road bike, with no biker gear–I wear capris and gym shoes when riding. I run errands, not train for triathalons. I don’t want a jersey or a water bag or a dental mirror duct-taped to my forehead (I refuse to enter into the whole helmet thing. I know I’m wrong. I don’t wear one. Move on.) I just wanna ride me bike!*
*I do any way. I don’t really care how I look. I just feel like I’m driving a Ferrari to the library… 
I was once hit by a car while biking. Its bad. Helmets are good. I do brain scans on people after accidents. Helmets are good.
Consider a skateboard style helmet. They won’t make you look stupidly aerodynamic, you’ll just look like a person in a modest helmet.
I missed that thread, I guess, but what we really should have told you was to buy a cheap used bike (or two or three) off Craigslist. Then you could have figured out what did and didn’t work for you for a lot cheaper.
ETA: oh, and what Attack from the 3rd dimension said about helmets. Your brain is your most valuable possession - protect it.
It always amazes me how threads pop up at the right times. My son is going to be riding his bike to school in a couple of months, which he’s never done before, so the other day my husband and I decided to ride up with him and see what it was going to be like.
I haven’t ridden a bike since I was a kid, and mine didn’t have gears or hand brakes or any of that stuff. When I climbed onto my husband’s old bike the other day, I couldn’t figure out why I had to hunch over to reach the handlebars. I got him to lower the seat so I didn’t feel like I was dangling by my coochie, but stopping with the handbrakes was still weird. It was easier to drag my feet.
After riding for a couple of blocks, my husband was way out in front, pedaling once in a while but mostly coasting. My son was in second place, pedaling busily, and I was in last place pumping the pedals as hard as I could and unable to catch up. Finally, I stopped in a pretty yard to die. The family eventually noticed and returned for me, and my husband tried to explain about gears. He adjusted it a little and it was better, but not great.
After a long, miserable trip of about two miles, we made it home and I went straight to the bathroom to check out the damage with a hand mirror. That was two days ago and my ass is still aching! I would definitely rather have a stupid pink Barbie bike.
I bet you remembered riding a bike as so easy, right? Because you used to do it all the time when you were eight years old?
I had no idea how good a shape I was in as a kid. I was a bookish nerdy kid but I could ride around on my bike all day (with two books in the basket in case I finished one.) Now I can’t make it up the gentle grade back home. Tells you something about our adult sedentary lifestyles, doesn’t it?
ETA - it wasn’t as hot when I was a kid, either. No, I still live in the same place. No, it isn’t global warming. It’s just that 100+ was cooler when I was a child.
Technical biking term for a non-helmet wearer: Organ donor
Wear the damn helmet,
Pretty please.
You have to perform a careful tuck procedure, but it does get comfortable once you’re used to it.
Bear in mind that the “aerodynamic” lump at the back of a bike helmet is also a crumple zone. When the back of your head hits the road, that bit absorbs the shock. Wear a ogdamned bike helmet. Not some helmet designed for another purpose. Looking the part won’t kill you. Hitting the road might.
A friend of mine came off after being hit from behind. He’s a tall guy and he landed smack on his back from about five feet up. He was fine. Then he saw that the back of his helmet, (that lumpy aerodynamic bit you are whining about) where his head had hit the road, was compressed to 1/3 its original size, and the hard shell was split in two. He nearly threw up from shock, thinking what his head would have been like if his helmet hadn’t done what it was supposed to do.
Oh god, not this again.
Yes, helmets are a good thing. No, they are vanishingly unlikely to save your life. Skulls are mighty strong. Bike helmets are rated for accidents equivalent to hitting the road at between 7mph and 12mph, depending on how stringent the rating it meets (guess whether most helmets on sale meet the higher standard or merely the lower - and therefore cheaper and easier to meet - one?)
I wear a helmet because I’d rather a bit of foam hit the road rather than my head. But I know that if I hit the tarmac at the kind of speed that would be likely to kill me sans helmet, I might as not be wearing one.
Why do people find this so hard to understand? By all means wear a helmet as it can protect you from minor injury, but the vast majority of people with “A helmet saved my life!” stories would have been fine without them.
But the helmet was all crushed/split, so that would have happened to my skull! No it wouldn’t.
Point 1: polystyrene is a lot softer than skullbone. Of course it crushed. Your skull has been designed by evolution to do a damn good job of protecting the mushy bits inside from impact.
Point 2: the helmet greatly increases the circumference of your head. There’s a good chance that your head might not have even hit the ground at all if you weren’t wearing it. Humans are very good at instinctively protecting their heads, but of course the instinct is based on the actual diameter of your head, so if your head is effectively larger, it’s more likely to hit the ground. Related point - I park my bike in the basement car park at work. It has a low ceiling, with beams and air-con ducts protruding from it. Walking around it without my helmet on, I’ve never hit my head. When I put my bike helmet on, I often bump my head on the beams because of the added size of the helmet which my spatial awareness doesn’t instinctively allow for.
I’m not trying to stop people from wearing helmets - as I said, I wear one myself - but please don’t repeat the mindless bullshit about them being lifesavers.
Sure. If my friend’s head had hit the road at a speed great enough to crush the foam to 1/3 it’s orginal thickness (which foam is quite hard, actually) he would have been fine. Right. Sure. Absolutely fine.
He may not have been dead, but he would not have been fine. When you whack your head hard on a concrete surface, you are not “fine”.
Kids fell off bikes and whacked their heads on the ground all the time before helmets became de rigueur. Very few of them suffered lasting damage.
I’ll never understand what it is about polystyrene foam that turns otherwise right-thinking people into evangelists who must convert everyone to their cause. Wear a helmet if you want (and don’t expect it to work miracles) but if you don’t, you’re really not materially increasing your chance of death or serious injury. We certainly shouldn’t preach at people and call them idiots or “organ donors” - a joke that originated with motorcyclists, and makes much more sense when you look at a motorbike helmet - if they choose not to wear a foam hat.