Bike Ride

“Hey Miles, I hear you ride your bike. Where do you ride?... Do you ride really fast? …About how many miles/hour, average, you know when you are out for a ride, not racing?... Yea, I’ve been riding this summer a bunch…”

So the conversation started about bicycling with a colleague the first day of school meetings in early September. Mike had become very excited about his bike. He made a commitment to riding over the summer logging over 1000 miles mostly on short day rides and rides to school. This conversation, a “malk” (man talk), “man-shit”, “broversation” was really an invitation to ride, a “man-date”, opportunity for “bro-bonding”, a “bronding”time request, a “brosesh” on bikes, a “brofest” with riding on the saddle or so I hoped. It is hard to dance around the man-date thing without sending the wrong signals or without sounding like a complete dweeb. The friendship process among men is like stalking a school of minnows: one false move and they all scatter and there is nothing there and no way to get 'em back. Put it out there without having it put down, with “it” being one's self. There seems to be a set of rules that I missed when growing up and cannot find on the internet that specify the way a conversation among men goes. Any variation from the set pattern or the set rules and the conversation is terminated and maybe never approached again. Women communicate with each other all the time so they don’t know the trials and tribulations of being a guy, a real guy, sensitive and all but also guy-like without coming off the wrong way especially to other guys or in front of other guys.

Always awkward, the first man-date request. Best to do it in person so all the body language can be read and the tenor of the voice and the posing of the body can be adjusted just right to send the correct message and to observe how the messages are being received and sent so the abort button can be pushed quickly. I like to go a half an octave lower with my voice, tuck in my stomach, slouch my back to the side a bit, stand at a 45 degree angle to the guy not quite looking him in the eye, but turning my head to face them but getting ready to run, throw up or change subjects when dancing around a first man-date situation. Mostly my finger is on the abort button because I know I have read things wrong and have few social skills. Calling a halt to it before much of me is at risk is my normal manner of behavior in these situations maybe because of so many times I have been burned (at least in my own mind).

I ride alone almost entirely in my basement on various devices, rollers, bike stands, wind trainers... Riding with people is kind of foreign to me and has been a chance to be raked over the emotional coals as I think about high school bike rides. Not only do I have a hard time interacting with other males, I have very few males to interact with since I have moved to Michigan and teach in a Girls’ School with a mostly female staff. The whole “locker room” thing between males was lost on me due to traumatic experiences in seventh grade locker room (nothing bad, just the general bullying thing while naked or near naked by older boys). High school was not too bad because I was in the football locker room with all the real bros, the athletes, the top social class of high school. I never really fit in to that group but was able to keep a low profile, observe and keep to myself in the “privileged” locker room outside the main crush of the regular locker room. All that testosterone, posing, posturing, and strange language sort of shot over or around my head and I never really got the purpose or even the meaning of half of went on. Not that I didn’t have testosterone, I just didn’t get why guys did what they did, talked about stuff that was so hurtful to others, stupid, or just outright lies. Guys seldom said what they thought let alone what they felt and if what they said didn’t have a sexual overtone, anger and hostility towards some group or specific individual or ended in a laugh it wasn’t said. Maybe in the high school football locker room there wasn’t much thinking and only feeling physical pain was respected. I liked getting beat to a pulp in practice and ending the day with bruises, out of breath and ready for a nap. I talked to most of the football players, but mostly outside the locker room or on the field. Seemed like when two or more of them were gathered they switched gears into a language, both verbal and body language, that I didn’t understand and didn’t feel like I wanted to understand. There were no translator in the locker room and despite a careful four year period of observation I never cracked the locker room male code of behavior or communication. Since I wasn’t let into the girls’ locker room despite my repeated attempts especially in my fantasies (I was always invisible of course), I never got into the whole female communication thing either. It does seem like girls/women communicate very differently than guys do and maybe even do not have a locker room version of communication that negates things said outside the locker room. Hard to know for sure.

Back to my riding man-date in Michigan… Hard to get excited about the scenery or weather from the basement as I spin out five or six thousand miles a winter, but I make do with head phones and an iPod. Some may say that it would be boring, but I have done this for decades and have my own world. I can race anywhere in the world and win. I can listen to news, music, talking, books, pod casts, or just quiet. The basement is the world. I close my eyes, turn on the headphones and spin my way anywhere I want to go. I even have several kinds of bikes to ride. Occasionally I pack up my bike and transport it to some faraway place to get in some actual road riding that doesn’t involve stop lights, stop signs, narrow roads with far too many cars, people yelling at me to get on the sidewalk which is my normal experience if I leave from my house on a bike and ride 30 miles in any direction or so it seems to me after years of living here. I was actually excited about the prospect of riding with another human on the “road” and see things around here I had not seen in the 15 years I have lived here.

I let Mike know my problems with riding around close to my house and talked some about touring and “century” rides which I have more experience with. Being the conversational terrorist I am, changing the subject to something I wanted to talk about was easy. This direction of talk sparked his interest and he had his stories to tell about his long ride, a century sometime in the past maybe this summer. He talked about riding to school from his house that really intrigued me. Mike is not an urban cycle commuter who rides no holds barred carving out his space on the road in defiance to Detroit’s finest and most massive production vehicles. No one would mistake him for a bike Nazi, a peddlya (a peddler and a playa), a fixcreant (fixed gear freak in traffic), that abound in busy metropolitan areas where traffic is thick and needs to be navigated like a salmon heading for the spawning grounds through the rapids, eagles, bears and thousands of other fish. One would not mistake Mike for a Sir Lance-alike, a McBiker, a Spandexter, a lycra-biker because he does not have the costumes when he rides. Mike seemed to me to be a person who would get out on the sidewalk and ride along pausing at each driveway and slowing at each road intersection especially when traveling on the sidewalk against traffic. Not that it’s a problems but it does make for some confusion among the rest of the vehicle world that witness this strange adult behavior and wonder what rules motivate the boy and where he will go next. Mike is happy, confident, and intelligent and seems to be pretty much in shape, so don’t get me wrong about his abilities. This guy logged a lot of miles this summer on the roads in this area.

I just think that as an adult who is learning to ride a bike in our current traffic world it is a bit confusing and there are not a lot of answers especially when riding alone. A lot of the bike riding rules develope as the riding ability progresses and as the rider encounters novel situations on their bike. A bicycle is a vehicle and should be treated as a vehicle by the drivers of the other traffic around it. That said, a bicycle rider is very exposed and it seems like there is a real imbalance between the bike and the car. There is a similar imbalance between a small car and big trucks but cars still drive with their regular rules. Bicyclists need to acknowledge the difference and within reason go about their business as a vehicle so there is some way to anticipate what all the participant in the vehicular dance on the roads are all going to do. Going freestyle leaves people clearing the floor. Mike’s tales of riding around here with little traffic made me wonder how he did it. He told me about riding down Telegraph Road (M-29) a six lane 50mph crowded road with no shoulder, huge and frequent pot holes (pit traps), businesses over the whole length with cars turning in and out of the driveways and curb cuts. As a professional bike rider and seasoned bike commuter, I would avoid that road at all costs and was in awe that I was talking to him after such a ride. Now, he did say that particular route was not a pleasant experience, duhhh, but he not only did it but survived and was not mentally scared for life.

Mike told me about riding to work from his house to school which he first tried going down Telegraph as described above. He dreaded the ride home that night but went for it anyway with predicable terror. This urban riding experience would have scared off most harden war veterans from every mounting a bicycle again, but he soldiered on. After consulting maps and exploring options he found a new route to work sans panic parkway, trepidation through-way, or abhorrence alley. He now claimed that he could ride to school with most of it on bike trails the little bit on roads with low volume traffic. Having lived here for 15 years I could not imagine how that could be. Surely there were not that many bike trails I knew nothing about.

I had ridden on one trail, the Clinton River Trail, which went out for and ungodly distance, 20 or 25 miles, until it disappeared into some town I wasn’t sure the name of and then switched to sidewalks and regular roads. I had ridden this trail a few times amassing about 40 or 50 miles on the round trip and not really understanding where I had gone, but was pretty sure I was not near where Mike lived. Bike maps are made with the route fitting on the map as best they can from left to right without regard to the cardinal directions. I never really checked directions I rode, I just followed the trail to its end, turned around and rode back. If I looked at a regular map when I got home I was never able to translate to the bigger picture like where I had actually gone. The Clinton River bike trail is a rail to trails route and didn’t seem to go anywhere I ever thought I needed or wanted to go except to ride the trail. It went on the outside of towns and out by itself as the rail lines tended to do back in the day when the rails shipped goods to towns. I like utility riding to destinations usually beyond the trail. As far as I knew this bike trail was just a place to practice balancing and pedaling a bicycle or a place to go for a long quiet run without moving through neighborhoods.

Mike said there were trails that went all over the place, 40 miles in one direction, 30 miles in another direction, beyond the distance he had ridden in another direction. He claimed that these could be connected with a little road work all the way from Cranbrook to his house in god’s knows where east Jesus, Michigan. I knew Mike lived out near Pine Knob where the school has skiing on Fridays during the season. I knew that it took about 25 minutes on the freeway to get to Pine Knob from Cranbrook when there were no road problems like crowds of people going up north, blizzards blinding the drivers on I-75, road work, an accident, or “Milton” behind the wheel of the bus. (“Milton” is one of the Cranbrook bus drivers who is beyond a slow and cautious driver: he drives with a pondering sluggish snail-like leaden plodding done with judicious circumspect about his guarded forethought of the route and conditions ahead.) In my mind a ride out there to near Pine Knob would take me all day and I would not know how to approach such a ride without including I-75. To make this a “commute” on bike was amazing and really had me questioning my understanding of the geography of this area. I told Mike I wanted to see this ride he did to his house because I had not experience much auto-free riding in this state let alone in this area.

Well, Mike said he was up for a ride “this week”, the week before classes started. Each day that week there was some kind of problem, meetings, work, some thundershowers, pre-season coaching… Finally on Friday with no days this week left, Mike called and said, “let’s do it.” He either implied or flat out said it would be a 30-35 mile ride. That is not a big deal even if there were some hills or wind. That was what he had been talking about with the tales of his riding this summer, a 20-40 mile ride every day. I could easily do that and if he showed me a new trail or connected a couple of trails. That knowledge would be a big plus I could build on for riding the area near my house. I wasn’t at all understanding how to get to Pine Knob area and back in 30-35 miles since it took 25-30 minutes on the freeway when we drove, but I was up for it.

Around 3pm Mike arrived at my house with his van and bike inside. Out came his bike, a trek mountain bike with no cleats or toe clips, a saddle with springs, 26” wheels, but pretty well fitted with good components (brakes, shifters, chain, rims…) and really pretty decent bike. A 30-35 mile ride on this machine would be a good ride given the upright position, the fat low pressure knobby tires, the lack of efficiency without toe clips or cleats, and the comfortable but energy absorbing saddle. The bike was a neighborhood bike of high quality on the verge of being a good trail riding bike. His bike did have two water bottle cages on it and a bike computer, so that was something used to go the distance.

I had my road bike, my touring bike. This hand-made bicycle has fenders and a rack, two water bottle cages, a comfortable efficient saddle, down turned handle bars, 700c high pressure tires, sealed bearings throughout, great components, 27 gear choices and was made to power up and cruise all day with the minimum of effort beyond overcoming wind resistance. The ride was only 35 miles so I abandoned one of my water bottles, and went for a new R.E.I. on sale short sleeve tec shirt, and a pair of regular shorts rather than cycling shorts. My bike had a bit of a noise in the front fender that I figured I could put up with for 35 miles, no big deal, or beat on it as I rode if it got to me. I searched around and finally came up with a spare tube for my bike which I knew I would not need but took it “just in case” my phone didn’t work. Mike did not have a tube, a pump, or a tool, he just had two store bought bottles of water, a helmet, sunglasses and the will to ride.

Off we sped on our machines from my house with me tweaking mirrors, clicking in and out of my cleats, adjusting my shorts, shirt and bandanna. We had about two and a half miles on neighborhood and a collector roads to get to the start of the Clinton River Trail. The pace was pretty good and I got the feeling that Mike was trying to ride fast to impress me and not “hold me back.” People are often sensitive about their riding when they mostly ride alone. They don’t know if the pace is fast enough or if their style and form is good enough to ride with the pack. Riding alone eliminates the competition and comparison factor. Actually everyone reaches about the same level of riding ability when they ride alone but they get better and better when they do ride with others. Riding 100 miles with ten people give every rider in the group the experience of the problems of riding 1000 miles since all the bikes encounter slightly different situations over the same terrain and everyone sees the solutions to those problems. Not everything has to happen to each cyclist for all the cyclists to learn from the common experiences. Any useful knowledge in the group is also passed on to all the cyclists by talking so all the cyclist become better riders.

Mike was more willing to go with jumping up to the sidewalk than staying on roadway as we did the bit of road work to the trails beginning. He had a few strange ways of maneuvering through intersections, but it was all good. A couple of miles on a busy collector street and we started the Clinton River Bike Way. This begins with a bumpy asphalt surface for about three miles, followed by about 15 miles sort of hard packed dirt which is actually a very good surface. The trail changes names somewhere and so does the surface until it seems to turn to sidewalks out in the sticks to the south. Our goal was ultimately to go northeast to Pine Knob. I thought we started out riding southwest for about ten miles or more away from Mike’s house. The wind was directly at our back on the first ten miles, a steady 15 mph blast with gusts over 20. That meant we would have to ride back into and against this wind before we finish if we came this way. I assumed that Mike was aware of this fact and up to it or had a way around it. We cruised along at a very quick pace, maybe a pace that was to show me that Mike could ride at a fast pace or maybe because he was pushed by the wind as a sail boat with its spinnaker set running down wind.

After ten miles or a little less, we turned off the Clinton River Bike Trail and onto a branch trail I had noticed but thought was just a sidewalk into a town. Turns out that after a mile of riding on sidewalk/trails, across a couple of busy roads, in and around the town, behind the library, along a river “walk” we got onto another hard packed earth bike trail surrounding a park. The route bent around in a new direction and took us west and then north, directly back into the 15mph wind. I only know the direction because of the severe cross wind in town followed by the driving head wind when we got to the earthen trail next to a park (I assumed the wind direction was constant). After passing through the park we rode through a fully enclosed tunnel of trees that burrowed through a forest and passed, horse farms, small parks, an archery range and river next to and along much of the trail. This was all new territory I hadn’t seen by bike, foot, car or plane. We could have been in New Hampshire for all I knew, definitely not Wyoming or North Dakota.

Our course was into the wind but in a very pleasant setting on smooth hard packed earthen trail with a few runners, walkers, and a cyclists or two to pass or who passed us going the other way. With the wind in our faces the going was a bit slower. It actually seemed to require even more effort than I thought it should be taking. Was I really a bit out of shape, or were my brakes on, or was I just not use to the bike I had chosen to ride or perhaps there was some other excuse that I could come up with to reconcile the speed with the effort. Turns out this part of the trail in this direction is a slight uphill run for about 10 miles or so. A river grade uphill to be exact and one I should have recognized since we were basically paralleling a river in the upstream direction. Riding was very comfortable and undemanding because with a lot of chatting and passing, cyclists, runners and walker the miles just seemed to roll by. The trees blocked a lot of the wind and the scenery provided a diversion from the slightly slower speed proceeding to our destination. I really wasn’t aware of the distance going by because I had left my Garmin GPS and bike computer at home and the novelty of the new route and the chatting kept me engaged and distracted.

We rode for some amount of time, hour or hours, crossing several earthen car roads, a couple of asphalt roads and were having a great time. I had no idea where we were or even which direction we were riding except in relationship to the wind. Mike let me know that we were coming up to a town called Lake Orion. For those not residents of Michigan this lake and town are pronounced /O’ re un/ not as the rest of the planet pronounces it /O ri’ un/. I believe the people who live here use this strange pronunciation so they can sort out strangers who come into their town. Must be a fearful group of residents.

After arriving in Lake Orion I was sure I had no idea of where I was, where I had been or where I was going. Nothing look familiar because I had only driven through this town in the dark on the way to somewhere else and then only once or twice since moving to Michigan. There was a bit of negotiation situation of crossing a busy street, sort of the main street and state highway. I had to take Mike’s lead and assume he knew where to get across and how to do it efficiently and safely. Mike had a strange sense of bicycle safety and negotiation of traffic on the road. I would have just ridden across the street or blended into the flow and made a left when clear but Mike had us go down the sidewalk heading against traffic to a stop light and then ride the crosswalk, go up a one way street the wrong way and then meet the regular street a block later. Very confusing for me and every other vehicle on the street. That maneuver cemented in my mind the idea that Mike was a good rider, handling his bike well, riding with strength, but he was very much not aware of the big picture of urban and suburban effective cycling. I might have to take charge of these maneuvers to keep from getting killed or having drivers get pissed off at the strange activities of these two cyclists.

The ride through Lake Orion was on regular surface streets (that is Michigan surface streets with no shoulder, no defined edge of the road, narrow lanes, pot holes and missing pavement…). We traveled around a lake (maybe lake Orion) on roads that weren’t too heavily trafficked but were narrow, uneven, twisty, windy and hilly. Again we were powering into the wind but now there was a lake or sometimes just single level homes around us instead of a tunnel of trees to block the gusts. At a few points Mike jumped to the sidewalk and dealt with the driveways he crossed while I rode along in the road wondering what advantage he thought the sidewalk gave. It took about 20 minutes to get back to a bike trail. We resumed our ride on a quiet uncongested bike trails. This was the Poly Ann Trail I had heard about but did not know much about it beyond its name. We followed this rails to trails route through the woods and behind some subdivisions (of greater Orion?) until it was time to get back to some road work again.

This last stretch of the ride was right into the 15mph wind on a road with quite a bit of rush hour traffic, with little shoulder and very little cover from the wind. At a few points even I jumped to the sidewalk for some traffic relief and because these sidewalks were nowhere near any houses or subdivisions so there were no driveways. Sidewalks are not good riding with the expansion strip every three feet, thump, thump, thump… This last push to Mike’s house was also a bit hilly, but rolling up a lot more than rolling down. Not that there were mountains or towering ascents with switch backs and steep grueling climbs. This was just going up the roads that were built along and up the moraines left by the melting glaciers 10,000 years ago with each moraine to the north a bit higher than the last one. Pine Knob ski hill is actually just one of the moraines, the biggest one for 50 miles ergo a ski hill. Mike lived near Pine Knob or so I surmised.

As we balanced the white line on the edge of the busy road (where the white line had not fallen into the ditch because the edge of the road was missing), Mike yelled at me, “Watch out ahead, the bridge sticks out a bit.” I looked down the hill and did not see the bridge anywhere and wondered how a bridge could “stick out”. Maybe the bridge had a lip that was a few inches above or below the road surface. Maybe a railing on the bridge was broken or bent by a collision and was sticking into the lane a bit. Maybe the bridge didn’t line up well with the road. I couldn’t see a bridge ahead so the bridge must be small and inconsequential. Lost in speculative cogitation of a sticking out bridge, Mike yelled from behind, “Right there!” Well there wasn’t a “bridge” sticking out anywhere in sight. There was a “branch” sticking out. The branch was sticking out from the brush in the ditch next to the road and hung into what passed as a shoulder of the road at eye level. One word difference and I am swerving around trying to keep from being skewered in the eye by a log attached to a tree sized bush. No big deal, I avoided an emergency trip to the ophthalmologist and kept from swerving into the accompanying rush hour traffic by skillfully ducking my head back so the “branch” slammed into the top front of my helmet and slid off my back. Mike just rode around it smoothly.

Riding on the roads in Michigan presents its challenges whether it is from the pot holes, weather related problems such as snow, ice, puddles, gravel and dirt or from the lack of a shoulder on 90% of the roads in this state. Sometimes there is a white line along the edge of the road: this is the designated shoulder over most of the state, just this three inch white line. This white line, when it is there, comes and goes as the road deteriorates and the edge falls away into the ditch next to about every road, or the gravel or the sand that spills onto the road if there is no ditch. Rarely there is actual asphalt to the right of the white line on the edge of the road, but not often. When there is some room to the right of the edge line it is often covered with sand, rocks sticks, chunks of cement or alternative road surfaces. This occurs because the state does not give a damn about cyclists or the edge of the road and because plowing the snow from the road in the winter pushes things to the edge, but not off the shoulder. When the snow melts the debris of the winter road snow and ice drops down on the edge and is swept clean by bicycle commuters or drunks swerving off the edge of the road. When there is six inches of asphalt to the right of the three inch white line, motorists expect cyclists to be in that “bike lane” the state has provided and will sometimes yell or honk to remind the cyclist of his/her transgressions of using the actual automobile owned road surface. Once in this “bike lane”, six inches at best, cars just proceed to pass as if the cyclist was on the sidewalk three feet away or off in the ditch where they end up if the rider tries to claim some space on the real road surface. Actually in Michigan the law says that vehicles cannot travel on the shoulder of the road, so not only could I get nailed by a pickup trucks side mirror, but I could get a ticket for riding on the shoulder.

Our ride snaked around up and down hills, onto sidewalk/bike ways and mostly into the howling 15mph head wind. We finally reached Mike,s house. Now I may not be in top Tour de France riding shape, but I have ridden a lot this summer and am no slouch. Arriving at Mike’s house I knew we were half way into our ride since Mike left his van at my house: We had to ride back. Without a watch or a computer I was assuming we had ridden maybe an hour or an hour and a half and had about 15 miles under our belt. This was suppose to be a 30-35mile ride. I mean to say, I was pretty tired for having ridden only 17 miles (half of 35miles) and wondered what the deal was. Sure it was uphill a bit, but only about 200 feet overall at most. Sure the wind was blowing hard, but it had not been a head wind for 100% of the ride only about 80%. Sure we went on a lot of hard packed earth surfaces, but we seemed to have moved right along at a very decent pace. With only one water bottle of water, I had finished that long ago and might have been dehydrated and not thinking straight. I wasn’t sure what the reason was for my exhaustion until Mike looked at his computer and said we had ridden 35 miles. My god I thought that was how far we were going on the whole ride! What time was it? How long had it taken us? How long was the ride back? There must be a short cut or maybe it was downhill with the wind to our back on very fast roads. Was he serious about riding back and getting there before dark? What was he thinking to start a 70 mile ride after 3pm? Maybe he intended to get a ride back to the van, but there was no one at his house. I sure could not follow our route back the way we came if he thought I was going to go back and get the van. Oh, well wait and see what developed. Looking to the west I could see the sun reaching the peak of the next moraine and with us on top of the highest moraine for 50 miles that did not portend a long period of day light for this day.

After downing about three liters of water and filling my one pitiful water bottle we were set to ride back to my house. The route began with a slightly different course but this was just roads paralleling the ones that we had just ridden on the last few miles. This return trip promised the wind to our backs and a slight overall downhill grade. Big deal, we also had 35 miles under our belt 35 miles to go with a rapidly setting sun to race. I thought maybe the pace would be increased a bunch on the ride back especially if we were going to make it before dark. I didn’t know what time it was but it was late and the shadows had pretty much merged together. My attempts to ride at a faster pace left me alone at the front and I didn’t know where I was going. Actually our combined pace was pretty decent especially for having already ridden so far. We made a few starts and stops as we tried to weave our way back to the trails. Even at the brisk pace with the wind to our backs and the overall downhill, the sun was setting faster than our bikes were moving. At one point Mike took a phone call from his wife and he said he couldn’t talk because he was riding, he would be on his way home in a couple of hours. A couple of hours!? At least he talked while he rode. Yes, Mike’s estimate of the time line seemed right as I thought about the parts of the ride I could remember. I was in fear of looking at the time. Kai called at some point and we stopped to catch our breath and take a drink. I looked at a road sign of a road we were crossing and we were on a road that is actually only about two miles from my house. Unfortunately we were god’s knows how far out on the road where the collector had turned to an earthen road and we were crossing the road going the wrong way to my house.

We sped down the earth packed trails with the sun glowing over the horizon behind us hidden in the dark of the tunnel of trees that surrounded us until I had to take my sunglasses off to see the trail’s surface. I thought it was seriously dark and wondered if calling for a ride was not in order. Taking my sun glasses off gave us another half hour or so before the trail would disappear into the black of night. There is math at work here. If it is so dark that a person cannot ride with sunglasses on a cloudless day, then it is late in the afternoon and there is only so much time until the sunglasses view of the world will be the way it is and getting darker. It will be seriously dark in X Minutes (not hours) and will not get lighter for ten or twelve hours.

Mike was beginning to fade at this point and it was hard to keep the pace moving and not ride away. After all we had ridden 50 + miles when I took off my sunglasses. It was getting to be tired time for this cyclist. Street lights were on as we flew through the last town on the bike trail and we headed directly back into the wind for the last 12 miles. The wind took its toll on the pace. Mike is sitting upright on the mountain bike and the 15mph constant wind pushed on him like a big lineman on a little running back. The pace slowed and the darkness encroached. Two miles from the last street we had to ride, I called it. The last stretch we would have to ride was on a very busy road and could be a death ride in the dark without lights. I was not riding down that four lane 50mph road in the dark wearing my dark clothes on my dark gray bike with no reflectors or lights. I had never thought we would be out after dark or I would have: A). not have signed up for the ride, or B.) have brought lights and worn reflective clothing. I thought we were riding only 35 miles today. Somewhere around 8:30pm I stopped and called for a ride where the trail met the Opdyke Road. It was very dark when we reached the parking lot at the end of the bike trail. Twilight was not even a memory, it was dark dark dark.

My god that was actually a savage ride, fun, but savage. Mike said he had not really ridden that far in one stretch except for the century ride he did at some point in his life. What was he thinking? I only thought we were going 35 miles not 70 miles with a raging head wind for the last ten mile ride caper. With only the one water bottle I had, I was totally dehydrated as well as physically spent.

This was a good ride. Lots of fun. I will have to figure out where I went when I recover.