Paul's Cyclery :: Shop Notes

shop notes : DECEMBER
THE VIRTUES OF A GOOD NIGHT RIDE

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December 10
My attorney and I were out for another night ride, and I am reminded how wonderful it is to be out in the dark on a bike. A cyclist with a good headlight will have an experience quite different than the day-only rider:

1. Less traffic. Only at midnight can you fly right down the middle of Speer avenue at 40mph towards downtown from 38th.

2. Wildlife. On Cherry Creek singletrack I have surprised little foxes and giant beavers, coming around blind corners to find them RIGHT ON THE TRAIL, only a few feet away! A mechanic I worked beside years ago claimed to have actually crashed into a buck deer (to hear him tell it). Owls hooting their territorial threats at each other right over our heads, plenty of deer and coyotes in open-space parks, humongous moths and beetles, and what we call “rock partridges” on fire roads, which appear first as a little red dot fifty feet away (light in the eye, with head turned sideways; kinda like the red-eye you sometimes get with a flash camera, I suppose) and then just as you are about to run over it, burst upwards in a flurry of feathers and panicked braking. These are creatures you will seldom, if ever, see in the light of day.

3. Darkness. Turns an otherwise familiar route into something completely new, and you can almost get lost in places which are otherwise back-of-your-hand familiar.

4. Weather. After a 100-degree summer day, an 80-degree night ride is pretty luxurious. Also, the snow falling at night is a spectacular sight as you ride through it. We LOOK FORWARD to evening snows, and it is almost automatically Ride Night when the flakes start falling in the afternoon.

5. Schedule. What else are you going to do at night? Watch the boob tube? Don’t tell ME that you don’t have time to ride.

6. Quietude. On a windless night, absolute calm; time standing still. Stop, turn off your light, and soak in the holy aloneness. Feel your pulse slacken, your breathing slow; there IS no better stress relief.

7. Darkness and Light. Cresting Green Mountain after a tough fire road climb, the entire cityscape opens before you like Christmas tinsel and lights. Reds, greens, the blue Qwest sign marking downtown, the glow of ambient light marking the Tech Center, airplanes with their landing lights circling DIA over eastern plains. Cloudy nights all that light bounces back downward and anywhere within miles of the city you really don’t need lights at all. Full-moon nights are especially astounding as it seems that the whole atmosphere just glows, and from the dark security of a sheltered Colorado valley, under a completely clear sky, you can look upwards into the star-spangled eternity and grasp the reality, that it’s good to be alive.

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