When I have bouts of sleeplessness, I'll pull up next to a good book and read until I fall back asleep. I've got a couple of nice pen lights that I often use to read by. They have green lights that are bright enough to read by but not bright enough to wake up my better 3/4ths, but they use expensive watch batteries
While at the hardware store with my eldest durable tonight, I ran across this cool head beam
, an Energizer LED headlamp that runs on 3 AAA batteries with two very bright blue/white lights and a bright red light.
The red light will come in handy for reading at night or for those times when I have my telescope out and I want to look at a star map without screwing up my night vision. I let my durables walk around in the dark with the blue/white lamps on and we could see surprisingly well.
And it looks to be useful for night bike riding. I put on my bike helmet with the lamp on my head and everything fit fine. I took a quick spin on my mountain bike (it's currently after 11 PM) and it lit the road far enough in advance for me to see approaching obstacles. And, more importantly, it allowed me to be seen by oncoming traffic.
My only concern is how long the head strap will last. As long as my durables don't use it as a WMD in a rubberband war, I think it will last awhile. In any case, I may have to buy two more of these so my durables and I can "explore" the dungeon or some other part of our "castle" during the long nights of the oncoming winter.