Night riding is good riding

Night ride tonight. Good stuff, too. It was a small crew, just Keith, Chad, and me. Chad hadn't ridden Miller Rock yet this year so that's where we headed. Gotta let a buddy check one off the list, eh? It was chilly tonight. We started on the road and descended quickly into Raymond for the start of the ride. That was enough for instafreeze. That town get's cold, for sure. it's stuck way down in the bottom of a canyon with plenty of cold water running thru. Instafreeze. Thankfully, we started climbing soon enough. And climb we did. We warmed up about as fast as we froze, too. No one cleaned the rocky, baby headed excuse of a jeep road tonight. A couple of dabs and we were all up, though. I guess completely getting off and walking a bit isn't really a dab, though...

Once we got to the "top" we were all into a good groove. The sun had gone away enough that we were all blazing lights by then, too. The "top" is deceptive, as it's only the first real intersection - not exactly the highest elevation of the evening. With our option, though, there was still more climbing from there. And more climbing. Oh, and more baby heads, too. And more climbing. But the rewards were good. We managed to climb on some really tight singletrack into an Aspen grove trenched with narrow trails and fun, embedded rocks. The ride was getting really good by this time. We were on fun singletrack with only more fun rolling singletrack left before the rocky and rooty jeep road descent back to town.

And then my light went out.

I had it charged for last weeks non ride and didn't plug it in since. Guess I should have! I had some very minor LED power left in the light and Keith loaned me his AA battery powered handlebar Cateye. I sandwiched myself between Chad in the front and Keith behind for the rest of the ride. The initial jeep road descent was fun. Challenging, though. There were times when I'd run out of light because Chads light was pointing one way and Keith's another. Those times were moments when I had to have faith in the bike and faith that I had picked an accurate line thru the rocks. Sometimes I didn't pick the right line and had a hell of a ride.

Then the loaner light went out, too.

Thankfully, we were almost to the final descent. From there on, we managed to ride effectively as a team enough that we could hit the main descent with almost as much speed as we normally do. Chad in front, me in the middle and Keith's light shining from behind. Sounds weird, but it was good stuff. Chad was pickign a smooth enough line that all I had to do was watch his light and follow his wheels. It felt fast enough, especially when I was playing pinball on baby head rocks that I didn't see ahead of time. Maybe it just felt as fast because I couldn't see a damn thing. Who knows but I made it down in one piece and never even put a foot down.

Good stuff that night riding. Better get used to it, too. Night riding season is upon us.