So this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but I think most of what has been written here is idiotic. Drunk driving is a really serious problem in this country to this day and is seriously underpunished. At least in MN I feel that it needs to be punished much more harshly than it is. Last year a drunk driver hit a guy, happened to be a cyclist, standing at a bus stop talking to a friend. The guy was in a coma and died days later. She got a total of 4 months in a workhouse, and four months in a halfway house which she regularly volunteered at before the incident. It wasn't a case of her being a white woman, 12 out of 13 other similar recent cases in MN got the same sentence.

The average person drives drunk 87 times before getting caught. I assume that you had BUI a similar number of times before this happened. While I agree about riding under the influence being less dangerous than driving under the influence it's still ****ing dangerous, and not just to you. You could very easily make a mistake while riding in traffic and cause an accident because someone is trying to compensate for a stupid move you made because you were drunk. More than that, of my friends in the cycling scene, many have been in pretty bad accidents, broken collarbones, smashed up faces, or worse, at some point over the years. Almost all were drunk at the time.

And BTW, a private attorney probably could have gotten you a lighter sentence. Typically public defenders and prosecutors have more or less of a quid pro quo system set up, often with the defender getting the short end of the stick. The are overworked and underpaid and so will convince their clients to make deals more frequently to lighten their load. Prosecutors know this and will often get the results that they push for because of this. The prosecutor gets another check in the win column and the defender gets a smaller workload.

While your punishment may have been too harsh what you did was stupid. Don't blame what happened on bad luck or the fact that you didn't have lights. You got a charge of biking while drunk because you were.... wait for it.... biking while drunk. You may think that the punishment is too harsh, but I'm guessing that next time you get drunk you may think about walking the bike home.