Two Wheel Blogs

Sunday night. Already? Back to work tomorrow? So soon? I can't believe it. Where did the weekend go?

I hope you had a good weekend. For me, this was just about the perfect weekend - just short of heaven. In the span of two days I managed to ride both road and trail. Trail ride followed by an after dark ride Saturday night and a nice road session today.

Saturday afternoon - trail
You saw my semi-coherent post from Saturday earlier. Not having been out on the trail for a while and then chalking up a near perfect combination of great weather, great trail conditions and riding so well I wasn't sure it was even me... My mind was just blown away. I still get all weird in the head just thinking about it.

Saturday night riding
It didn't stop there though. When the sun went down we headed out for another round of the trails. Two more hours of sweet single trail in the darkest dark - no moon, just the lights we carried to tell tree from trail.

If you have never experienced riding at night, you simply must. Beg or borrow a light if you have to. This is something not to be missed. One time. Do it while you can. There's nothing like it. For my Saturday night ride I rode with a borrowed NiteRider system.

I have a lot to learn about the various lighting technologies, and I have some great help from a couple of trusted sources who've been there and know what works well and what doesn't. The system I used put out some amazing light - bright and uniform. I'll be looking into the alternatives, but the NiteRider HID setup has set the bar for the others to beat. And it won't be easy. My impression was an immediate "This is the light for me."

Riding at night is heady stuff. A whole new high. And the buzz just won't go away. I don't know really how to describe it to you. Will pictures do the job? Video maybe? I tried to capture some of the thrill on my digital camera. Brought it along, you know, for posterity and all. Check out the video:

Did you get a laugh out of that? I sure did when I saw it. I'm thinking I'll need a new phone line for all the congratulatory calls. Yeah, that's a good one. It's hard enough to aim one of these things in the daylight when you can see the trail. We didn't count on it being about ten thousand times more difficult in the black of night. Hey at least the music's good.

The trail music at night is pretty good as well. Maybe it's heightened awareness caused by the limited field of view, but every sound seems louder. The cool night air closes in around you making your whole world seem smaller. So many sounds in such a little place. It's energizing. Adrenaline. Primal.

It's not to be missed.

In total I ended up with about four good hours of trail riding by the Saturday at midnight deadline. This afternoon, with my butt dragging from a short night's sleep and a major TSS event, I added an hour's easy spinning on the road - just the right prescription after Saturday's anaerobic adrenaline fest. Just the right flavor of icing on the cake.