The Black hole ate my light!

No no no not that kind of black hole. Get your minds out of the gutter.

I was able to make my bike trip on saturday instead of friday. (my old topic=Now that sucks) The swelling went down enough to get my helmet on. Seeing the bike was already packed I decide to go. Swollen face and all.

The first part of my trip I went thru the Danial Boone National Forest. I just picked roads from a map that looked good. I was on road #77 headed south towards Rt 402 and the town of Slade. I round a curve and I am looking at a tunnel. This tunnel might be called "The Nada Tunnel. Looking at the map on Google that part of the road is called "Nada Tunnel Road", makes sense now.

Well anyways this tunnel looked to be about 10'-12' wide and about 20' tall and had water running out of it. Looked to be hand cut in the 1800's. The water covered the width of the road. It was a grey over cast day and not sunny. So I didn't think anything about my eyes having to adjust to the darkness. I enter the tunnel cautiously. Once inside I could see NOTHING, absolutely nothing! Except for the hole on the other end because of the day light. It ate the light from my 65w low beam. So I switched to the 100w high beam. Still NOTHING!! It ate the 100w's worth of halogen light. It was like I had my lights off. I couldn't see the sides even though they were only 5' away. I couldn't see the road surface or anything. It was like I walked in to a very dark closet and closed the door. Man talk about being spooked! My senses were telling me this is a bad idea. Good thing the tunnel was straight so I could center myself on the light dot at the other end of the tunnel. It wasn't until about 25 yards from the end I could see light bouncing off the sides of the tunnel. That may have been from the cars lights that were waiting for me to exit so they could drive thru. They were angled off the side of the road to let me exit and their lights was pointed towards the inside wall.

I have been in all kinds of situations in my riding career of 30+ years. But I've never ridden totally blind like this before. Not knowing how slippery the road surface could have been or anything laying in the roadway or sticking out from the side I was on pins and needles going thru. Boy I was glad when I came out the other side in tact. It was blacker than black! This scared me more than the deer that ran out in front of me later in the trip that I could have leaned forward and petted at 50 mph. But I had my hands full of brake lever. I'm now glad I practiced all those panic stops in the past!

Over all it was a good trip of only four days and a little over 1400 miles, mostly back roads. The old gen 1 Interceptor ran flawlessly. BUT I did lose my lights on the way home. The switch I put in 25 yrs ago to turn the lights on/off gave up the ghost. During the day thankfully. I just rewired it. Actually just put the two ends together. Now the lights are on all the time when the key is on.

This is why I never say I know all about motorcycling! There's always something out there waiting to get ya whether you know it or not. What have you all run across in your riding?

 

Nice write up Grey. Sounds like a fun trip. Nice that the cars waited, instead of trying to squeeze by you.

 

Are you sure you weren't in the Feather River Canyon up here in my neck of the woods? There is a tunnel there that is exactly as you described, water and all. The first time I rode through it, I almost wrecked due to losing all of my orientation points. You know...up, down, left, right...

Now when I ride through it I turn on the high beams and focus on the exit. I always slow my pace and think, "I am upright, I am upright."

 

I can relate, although it wasn't a tunnel. I left Nashville for Murfreesboro (about 30 miles away) one morning. It was upper 30's when I left Nashville, and about 15 miles east I hit some fog while running down the interstate. I didn't realize it had cooled of as much as it had when I got out of Nashville and when the fog hit my faceshield it instantly froze and making the shield completely opaque. I slapped my shield up and it did the same thing on my glasses. I managed to get over to the shoulder by tilting my head way down and looking over my glasses where I could get my glasses off.

As I said, I can relate. Not being able to see while on a bike is for the birds!

 

It sounds like there's something wrong with your headlights. Just because you run a 100 watt bulb doesn't mean it's putting out a lot of light. When you said something about your jury rigged light switch causing your lights to go out on the way home is when I started to think you have a problem.

Also, the headlight might look bright when you look at it, and it may even seem quite bright on a dark night but it still might not be putting out much light.

I suggest you check it out in any case and make sure.

Living in Japan as I do, I get to ride into all sorts of tunnels, long, short, medium, large and small and my headlights always light them up pretty well.

On the other hand, black is a good absorber of light, which is why it's black. Nothing reflects off of it. If the inside of that tunnel was really black, no amount of light would reflect off it. Which is what you noted.

It just freaks me out when someone mentions something about a jury rigged switch and their lights cutting out, etc etc...

Do you have that switch inline on the hot wire to the bulb or what? I'm trying to imagine how a CAR could navigate that tunnel since it's much wider and its lights wouldn't help either...

 

I don't understand how you figured my light setup was jury rigged. I was in electronics, senior systems engineer, for 19yrs. So I know a little bit about wiring and circuits. I also was the one that made the lighting system for our 24hrs bikes. We had the brightest and best of most all teams out there. I even cut out the bezels on the 7" dia. lights and used clear lenses. With 130w bulbs running off relays we had very bright spot lights that reach very far out. You only need to light the track, not the side grass were you don't ride. This switch has worked for at least 20 years. Good jury rig job eh? The contact end broke off. I may have abused it this past winter when I took the bike all apart. And yes I'm getting full potential out of the 65/100w setup. I reconfigured the main fuse panel to separate the front and rear light circuits out. Then switched the hot from the RR to the panel that fed those. The switch has an AC rating of 8a@125v. Which is enough for a 100w-12v dc.

That tunel was blacker than black believe me. On one of the 24 hr races at night with no moon light and no lights on the track. We blew a fuse(raining) to the lights. I can a test to how black that was. But I could see the track was blacker than the blackness off track. This tunel was blacker than that and ate the light.