Cheap alternative power source.. for my bike lights?

[WildDreamer]

I'm looking to decorate up my bike with cheaper (sadly I can't afford EL wire this year >.< ) LED and string/tube lights a la holiday light string style. However, since it is not the season, everything I'm finding is the sort of thing that you plug into a wall outlet. I'm trying to find a fast, cheap solution involving an awesome rechargeable battery pack (charged by pedaling? Charged by sunlight? charged, if need be, by draining my car battery and having to jump start at the end of the week again?) or something similar. I need something small enough to tote around on my bike, powerful enough to power one or two strings of lights for most of the night without needing to be recharged, and cheap enough to afford in the next three weeks. And preferably, because of the light string I happen to already own, something that I can just plain plug the lights into, instead of kludging it together.

Any thoughts from the more experienced among you?

[junglesmacks]

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_from=R40&_ ... Categories

Easy.

[Sic Pup]

Disregard

[gyre]

dealextreme

Or look at a D cell pack of duracells.
And inverter.

Nicads past AA are out but expensive.

[WildDreamer]

You guys are awesome. Here I was running in circles trying to find a solution to already having lights and no way to power them, and you guys send me in the direction of cheaper lights that already do what I want them to do (I found solar powered lights and a string of rainbow fairy lights that run on batteries and maybe I can wire them up to the solar panel too if I feel especially crafty) and are cheaper than what I already bought.

I'm glad I can still return the one I bought before, really, cause I should have thought this through better in the first place. I kind of liked the idea of having a rope light wrapped around my bike, but the string lights will do much better in the long run.

Ooh, hey, I can use my big heavy car-jumper emergency battery pack and run the rope lights off of it to light up our campsite after dark, instead. Sounds like a better plan.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[gyre]

Check out the thread on fiber optic LEDs.