I suppose you could use IR lights in conjunction with NV, but it isn't going to save you from flaring whenever you see another directional (or even a significant omni) light source. For riding, I wouldn't want anything less than Gen 2 because even Gen 1+ can miss you some serious detail that I just wouldn't want to miss off-road. Of course you'd need a conventional visible-spectrum light in case either of your devices failed; very likely one would fail if you fell (and guess which one).

So unless you already have an AN-PVS 7D kickin around and wanna use em more often, I'd suggest going with HID or something like that.