Into the Dark

There's something satisying about riding into the dark. Or riding out of the dark, either way. Lately, I've had the pleasure of donning the lights, and getting in some good sunset to darkness rides.

Wednesday night I grabbed my recently overhualed Kona Jake, now with fancy gears and a new stealth black paint job, and headed out for some much needed gravel time. It's that time of the year where my percentage of gravel to overall ride time increases dramatically. However, as long as trails are dry, they eat up the majority of the time. Wednesday's night right was my 45 mile loop I do, with roughly 2600 feet of climbing. It's a good mix of flats and hills, and I enjoyed having gears to be able to push a faster pace on all the flat stuff. About an hour into the ride, I had to switch the head gear on, and illuminate the night with my blasting beam of white light. I felt good, the air was crisp, and the pedals were turning nicely after Tuesday's trainer trashing.

Last night I again got to do some day/night riding up at SMP. I arrived to Burnsey's place early to go out and scout the trails to see if they were dry enough. Luckily for us there were, and I was able to hit some rogue trails out to the mountain bike trails, railed all of those, and headed back to Seans. They were gracious enough to let me stuff my face with some tasty turkey soft tacos, and then it was off to the backyard skills park. Neither one of us had very much skillz, so we played around for a thirty minutes or so, and then decided it was just us two for the Thursday night ride. Fast forward 3 hours later and we had completed the night ride in fashion. Tons of trail, lots of deer, and plenty of goofing off on unique trail obstacles.
I saw at least a hundred deer.
Playing on logs. Pic courtesy of Burnsey.

Two nights, two great rides. I'm pretty wore after yesterday so today I'll be hitting a nice easy 45 minute cross bike ride around some parks, and then another 45 minutes of some heavy hitting core and upper body workouts. Then it's off to deer camp. Yes sir, time to restock the freezer with some wild venison. Hopefully that is.

I'll sneak out tommorow for some three hours of gravel, and then hopefully Sunday have some of the boys down to my neck of the woods for a long day in the saddle hitting up all of Knob in it's full glory. I can't wait to scout some trail I've never ridden.