Grabbin’ another night ride

As the weather turned cooler, we’ve been transitioning from Cycling to a stronger focus on Olympic Weightlifting (if we can improve flexibility and technique, we may get to compete in a USAW meet someday).  Even so, it’s great to still work in a ride from time to time outside that doesn’t involve using the bike on the trainer indoors.

Tonight we loaded up the Surly LHT’s and rode 15 miles on the Little Miami trail from the Kingsview Industrial Park up to Morrow and back.  There is something extremely peaceful about night riding that reminds me of the serenity of cave diving…. almost like riding in a tunnel with only the immediate illuminated.

I tested out a new brighter Niterider light.  It was almost too bright, so I used the dimmer setting to dial it back a bit.  It was still brighter than my older Niterider light, which I stuck on Penny’s bike.  If the new light didn’t have a bright flash mode, I would be happy with another mini-Newt like my older one.

When we got to Morrow, we rode down to the far end of the soccer field at the Veteran’s Park (how appropriate for Veteran’s Day!) and covered our lights to just stare at the stars for a while.

Aside from one deer, we saw a couple of small red fox and other gleaming eyes in the bushes along the trail.  Very cool ride!

 

 

First Night Ride of the Season

The time change occurred last night, so it got dark at 5:30pm tonight.  Given the limited daylight, we chose to start our ride at dusk and ride down to Loveland and back in the dark.

We parked at Kingsview Industrial Park and headed down the Lebanon Trail toward the Little Miami Trail.  The temperature was dropping quickly as the daylight disappeared.  We had our cycling tights on, full finger gloves, wool shirts, wind breakers, and even a light polypro skull cap under our helmet.  Things were still a bit nippy as the temp dropped to the low 40’s.  Penny is going to use her warmer full finger gloves next time, and we are both going to go with warmer tights and slip on the shoe covers to keep the toes warmer.

This was an incredibly peaceful 20 mile ride, and the maiden night ride on our Surly Long Haul Truckers.  Much of the trail was covered in leaves, the moon was full, the wind was still, and there was basically no traffic.  It just doesn’t get better than that.  It was kinda odd that the only traffic was two law enforcement officers in cars, a ranger and a local policeman, investigating reports of a deer down on the trail.

Hopefully we can continue to fine tune our layering and get in a couple more night rides before the weather prohibits any more…. in fact… we’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Surly Pugsley built up with 4″ fat tires for riding in many additional conditions than we can with our standard mountain bikes.