The Kahona heard I'd been riding at night with the ghetto lights he
made for me, so he wants to go night riding with the Paladin, too.
Fine, I have no idea how much charge I have left, but hey, let's go for
it. (The night I did my solo night ride earlier in the week, a Humongo
Cougar was found and photographed just half a mile from where I was
riding...) Hmmmm.. No more solos at night for me.
Get to the trailhead around 9pm, chug an alcoholic energy drink for
luck, and saddle up. We can still see enough to ride without the
lights, until we enter the black forest. I go to low beams, he's on
high in the lead, and he has his helmet light on too. I couldn't find
my helmet light in time, so I wuz stuck with just the bar light. Won't
be that stoopid again.
Dipsy through a narrow edge of the canyon, kinda rocky, kinda tough at
night, even to the point of riding the harder parts with a leg out
(just to be safe). This is an easy place to biff on a good day, in
daylight.
Come out of the canyon, and up the long series of switchbacks. Kahona
talks me into going to brights, and we're styling along, gaining
elevation, as a deep blue then finally black settles on the Treasure
Valley far off to our left, the downtown lights sparkling. Very cool.
Get on top to the start of Bucktail, a true croissant of a trail--
smooth, buttery and very twisty. I usually take this little slice of
cheese at mach 1, but with just the bar light, the turns are kicking my
skinny butt! Riding mostly on faith and memory, since I can't see into
the turn without a headlamp.
Eventually, even my bar light's dying out, so I trade batteries with
Kahona, and I'm to run the bar light, and the galoot to go with his
head lamp. So I follow him down the long, straight descent, where we
normally catch a lot of air on the water bars. I sorta pop them, but
I'm pretty cautious. There's a long narrow section that's also a
trick, Amazing what real singletrack feels like. A 10" wide trail for
about half a mile. Hard to hold the line at night.
We come to the top of the technical descent, and my light has died.
Great. Now all we have is Kahona's helmet light, and "the woods are
silent, dark and deep, and we've got miles to go before we sleep..." I
warn the dood about the tough switchback coming up, and he does fine, I
tripod it since I can't see anything except his light ahead of me. I
try to follow close, but man! I'm all over the place. This is an
off-camber side hill, rocky, with exposure to the right a loooong ways
down. So I pull out my left leg and limp it all the way to the final
descent, almost biff it a couple times, but the ole Rev holds me up
despite my fool self.
Now the headlamp's dead, it's midnight, no lights at all, no moon, and
we decide we'd better take the dirt road back to the rigs, rather than
re-enter the black forest. Now that would have been a dangerous joke!
Get back to the rig, load up, and we're grinning like fools let out of
a loony bin. Drive around looking for fast food (all closed) and
finally settle on our own wive's home cookin.
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more...
CDB