Lights, Trails, Action?

Last night was a typical Thursday night. The bikes were on the truck and we rolled from work headed to Vail for our rendezvous with Luke and some dusty fire roads and single track.

We arrived in the parking lot and started to prepare for the ride. I was feverishly mounting lights and batteries on the bikes. We were getting dressed and hurrying around. After a bit of time Allison went to take her bike off the rack and asked me to get the keys to open the lock.

The keys weren’t in the door of the truck. Uh oh. They weren’t in the middle compartment. Increasing concern. They weren’t in the back seat. On the verge of panic. They weren’t in the gear bags. Panic sets in.

When did I have them last? Did I leave them on the bumper (I had done this and destroyed a set of keys two years ago on our way to a training ride)? Are they gone for good? That cluster of keys is so important! It has my only set of keys for the Utah house, for our home, for the mailbox, for my mom’s house… AND FOR THE LOCK TO GET THE DAMN BIKES OFF THE TRUCK!

So after cursing myself for a minute, we leave to drive across town and see if dumb Justin has lost the keys for good, or if they are simply sitting in some innocuous location at home.

Don’t worry faithful readers, all was not lost. The keys were indeed left in the garage and what would have been a horrible night, turned out to just be an inconvenient delay in our evening ride.

So when we finally made it back over to start our ride the lights were required. We turned them on and headed out to get a bit of riding in before Luke had to head home (he had been riding for quite a while already).

Allison found that she was really struggling with her vision. It seems that although she can get around during the day, and ride quite well under well lit conditions, at night she becomes the female equivalent to Mr. Magoo.

I was riding with a single HID, she was riding with an HID plus a Halogen. Her pace while descending was pretty painful so when we dropped Luke off at the cars to head out on solo lap I swapped my HID with Allison’s Halogen. This swap seemed to help some, but she still wasn’t feeling comfortable so we didn’t ride the race course and stuck to mostly fire road. I am concerned though, I don’t think we can do much better than the two HID setup for night time racing.

In any case, I was having a blast out there! I was going fast uphill and down when riding with the HID, and then after dropping Luke off decided that I would ride with the Halogen off as much as possible. It was great fun! Allison had the equivalent of the Sun shining in front of her, so even with my light off I could still see pretty well. I felt really good and it had been a long time since we rode after dark. It was a beautiful night and I had a fabulous ride! You just can’t beat mountain biking with good friends.