Nighttime Bike Riding

Like most people, I log most of my biking miles during the day. But sometimes, I get an excuse to ride after dark, and it's oh-so-enjoyable.

Tonight, I rode across town instead of driving, knowing that when it was time to come home, the sun would be long-down. I was looking forward to it.

Maybe riding on the road at night should be scarier. I actually like it. Cars sneaking up from behind give themselves away as their headlights drown out mine. And I suspect my lights and the motion of my reflective ankle straps makes me more noticeable than I am during the day. My legs are used to absorbing the bumps from a rough road, so the bumps I can't see until too late don't bother me much.

My favorite part, though, came when I got to the bike trail. As soon as the trail separated from the road, my headlight went off. The city light was more than enough to keep me from splashing into the overgrown pond that passes for a lake in Iowa. Not far past the lake was the nearly-straight wooded section of trail (*). It's a fast section of trail during the day. At night, with the trees blocking most of the city light, it's still fast. I love the feel of zipping along in the near-dark, legs pumping, eyes and ears searching for anything on the trail ahead.

8.5 miles; about a half hour. And about half of that was with my headlight switched off. It was great.

(*) Really, this trail seems to be an attempt to bio-diversify Iowa. Besides the lake section and wooded section, there is a prairie section, a scrub brush section, a city-lawn section... Someday, an enterprising Iowa Tourism Board official will glass the trail in, call it Biosphere 3, and wait for the tourism dollars to roll in. Hey, it beats corn!