Solstice Ride: The Joys and Troubles of Night Riding

In my earlier days, I very much enjoyed riding alone at night. [...] It would be hard to defend the touristic value of these night stages, or argue that a beautiful landscape benefits from being seen under the pale moonlight rather than in the morning or the evening sunlight. Yet there is no doubt that some aspects of nature are more amazing when illuminated by the moon rather than the sun. Vélocio in Le Cycliste

The latest issue of Bicycle Quarterly features the republication of a 1929 article about night riding by famous French randonneur Vélocio. Inspired by his writing and the beautiful summer we're having here in Wisconsin, I started planning for an all-night ride on the shortest night of the year (this time hopefully without hitting a skunk...). The plan was to head out around sunset and keep going all night until the solstice sun would rise again.

 I developeded a few tentative routing options and tried to recruit fellow riders. Unfortunately, the few people potentially interested had other commitments that night, and so I was going to be on my own. I decided on a long but not ridiculous route: Head west on the Military Ridge State Trail to Dodgeville, then riding towards the Wisconsin River, follow the river east, and then return to Madison—all in all about 250 kilometers. This seemed like a good opportunity for another test ride of my newly acquired SOMA Grand Randonneur (there will be a dedicated post on this) and so I quickly installed the also new B&M IQ Cyo Premium headlight and swapped the dynamo front wheel from my Gunnar to turn it into an night ride-appropriate vehicle.

The sun has set

I got back from work a little after five, loaded up my front basket with supplies, had a nice pasta dinner, and by 8 o'clock I was ready to go. The fading sun provided beautiful light and I was zooming along at a decent pace, enjoying the cush of my 42mm-wide Compass tires.

I love riding this stretch of the Military Ridge in the evening light

Just after Verona I noticed that my front light bracket had started coming loose. A quick fix, but as soon as I stopped a squadron of mosquitoes immediately went on the attack. It was probably quite the sight to see me simultaneously trying to fix my light while minimizing the number of bug bites. Not much after this incident, I noticed that the right side of my saddle caused some discomfort. The saddle is a B17 Imperial that I just recently brought back to life with a new frame. I think what happened was that after a long ride in the rain last weekend, the saddle must have sagged enough to put pressure on parts of my behind where there shouldn't be any.

Blurry moon sliver over Mount Horeb

The last remainder of daylight was gone now, and soon the thin sliver of moon disappeared beneath the horizon too. I arrived in Dodgeville at 11:15. From here on I would be no longer on the bike trail but country roads. Lo and behold, I straight missed the first two turns, giving me pause: I was in unknown territory, relying only on the tiny screen of my GPSr for navigation. Suddenly that no longer seemed like such a great idea, and my saddle issues certainly didn't help. I assessed my options: Across the street, the glowing sign of a Super-8 motel tried to lure me in. I wasn't all that tired, though, and so I figured I might as well just turn around and take the same route back. The saddle discomfort I could deal with and navigation wouldn't be an issue on the bike trail. So around I turned, now with a slight headwind.

This time around, I didn't miss the turn-off to Blue Mounds State Park and climbed my way up to the plateau on top. There were a couple campers and barricades, presumably in preparation for the Horribly Hilly Hundreds taking place on Saturday. At 2:30 am, everybody was asleep (including the mosquitoes), though, and so I could enjoy a sandwich and a wonderful view of the starry sky. Continuing on the path would mean that I would miss out on a lot of the views of the skies and so I decided to continue on roads from Mount Horeb on. At least here I would be in familiar territory, and it was late enough to not have to worry much about people driving home after bars closing.

Strange animal sightings in the dark...

 Leaving the path also meant more hills, and while my mind was quite awake still, my body showed some signs of tiring. Nonetheless, riding on these back roads was much nicer than being on the path.

State Capitol, very early in the day

In the distance I could see the glow of Madison, gradually supplemented with the first bits of light of the new day. I arrived back home a little before 5 am, exhausted but not excessively tired. The theory that as long as you keep going your mind can stay awake for a long time does seem indeed work for me too.

Bike counter on the SW Commuter Path

All in all it was a great experience, quite different from riding during the day. One of the things I enjoy about cycling is just looking at and experiencing the landscape. At night, this experience is very different: Visually it is very much reduced; but at the same time this enhances your other senses to some extent. If I were to a ride like this again, I would pick a route that's easier to navigate, maybe choose a night with more moonlight, and make a better effort of recruiting fellow riders.

A Converge Show, a Night Ride and a Skunk

Mephitis mephitis by Dan Dzurisin, CC-By 2.0

A couple weeks ago I heard that Converge were going to play at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse and, Converge being one my absolute favorite bands, I wanted to go!

Only how to get there? Bus service to Syracuse is basically non-existent and taking the carshare car would have been too expensive. That left me with either getting a rental car or taking the bike. It's about 90 km to Syracuse, i.e. easily manageable for a one-way ride, but pretty far for a return trip. Initially I planned on riding there, staying overnight in a cheap motel and then riding back the next morning, but riding back the same night seemed like an interesting and challenging option.

I left Ithaca around 2 p.m. on Wolfgang, loaded with only a Frontroller. A large part of the route I had done previously on my Winter Adventures ride. Between Freeville and Munsons Corners I had a flat due to a not properly vulcanized tube patch. Because I only had brought one spare tire and didn't like the idea of potentially having to patch a tube on the night portion of my ride, I decided to stop at a bike shop in Cortland. Thanks to my smartphone and an open wifi access point I found my way to Action Sports on N Main St -- only to realize they were closed on Tuesdays! Oh well.

After that little detour I continued north on NY-281, with traffic gradually getting lighter. After a short break in Tully, I turned east on NY-80 and then turned left again onto Apulia Rd, leading me north towards Syracuse. Apulia Road is lovely: following a river and the railway, it is slightly downhill most of the time, pavement is great and traffic is very low. At Jamesville Beach County Park I made a stop to refill my water bottles (their restrooms were locked, unfortunately) and continued towards the huge quarries just outside of Syracuse. After going through an underpass across I-481 I then rode through nice residential neighborhoods on low-traffic streets and finally arrived at the Lost Horizon a bit past 7 p.m.

Unfortunately, there was no proper bike parking anywhere near the club and thus I hid Wolfgang behind hedge. The Converge show was really awesome and made me forget my slightly sore body. Therefore I decided to indeed skip the motel and ride back right after the show ended.

Converge by Francis Bijl, CC-By 2.0

I left around 10:30 p.m. and returned on the same way. Riding at night can be really nice: almost no cars, no noise except for the sounds of wildlife, and also no wind. The sky was mostly cloudy and the moon did not rise before 2 a.m. To prevent tiredness and boredom I listened to podcasts on my phone for quite some time but eventually ran out of them. Then somewhere between Tully and Cortland it happened. I wasn't properly paying attention to the road and suddenly I hit something. I didn't crash but it was quite a bump and a gross, cracking sound. I must have run over an animal, presumably an already dead one. I had little desire to go back and take a closer look and just continued on my way home. Only when I arrived in Ithaca at 4 a.m. and carried the bike up the stairs to our apartment I realized something was wrong: during the ride I had smelled skunk every once in a while but didn't think much about it -- it's a fairly common thing in rural Upstate NY. But not in our building! So it dawned on me that the run-over animal must have been a skunk. A smell test on Wolfgang's tire confirmed by suspicion and I decided to park outside...

Stats: 190 km, about 1400 m of climbing, average speed of 21 km/h

Riding through the night

I'm not a big fan of winter (especially of the kind of winter we have here in Upstate NY) but I must admit that riding in the winter does have its appeal. I went for a quick spin out to Trumansburg yesterday and worked for a while at Gimme. By the time I started my way, via Enfield, it was totally dark and riding through the night on quiet backroads is pretty cool. The experience is quite different from daytime riding because you focus almost exclusively on riding. Something I tested for the first time yesterday were chemical foot warmers. I have serious cold/numb foot problems and so I thought I'd try something new. The combo of wool socks, foot warmers, summer cycling shoes, and neoprene booties was pretty good. I still ended with numb feet but it was much better than usual. I might buy more.

On a different note: I bought a new frame on ebay! More on that later.



Odo bike 1: 2654 km