After Dark

This time of year, I always seem to finish my rides after dark. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week were no exceptions. Wednesday, we rode from P-slim's place, and got home around 5:15PM, which was a reasonable amount of riding in the dark. Thursday, Jordan bonked, and Carla picked him up in River Falls, after which, we rode back to Hudson in the dark (with head/tail lights). We got home around 6:15PM.

Friday was over the top. Jordan, Painman, and I started the ride around 12:30PM, and figured there would be plenty of light. Our troubles started right away, with the trail from Victoria to Excelsior being basically un-rideable. It took us an hour to ride the first 10 miles, where we met P-slim. We stopped at the Depot in Hopkins, then cruised in on the Greenway to the River, then onto Dunn Bros. Painman's feet were frozen, and he had a migraine headache. It was 4:30PM, with around 2 hours of riding left to get back to Victoria. P-slim headed back to the safety of his place in NE Mpls, while we jumped on the trail back to Painman's.

It was dark by the time we got to Hopkins, and we decided to keep going as far as we could. We had tail lights, but no headlights, so we couldn't see very well. The trail was difficult to navigate, since you couldn't really make out where the edges were. Plus we kept coming upon walkers and joggers, which were mere shadows on the trail. This made for slow going, and we didn't get back to the 318 in Excelsior until 6:30PM. Painman called Hollie to come get him and Jordan, while I rode the rest of the way back on the wide shoulder of Hwy 7.

It was actually kind of fun and surreal riding through the dark on the trail. It was rather peaceful in a strange way. When we got home, Painman served us up some Pizza, and then we played Nintendo Wii for the rest of the night. Good times.