Country Views: Into The Night

The bottle config has been sussed out. More on that later...

Saturday was a bit of a wash what with family obligations, a trip to a small town to pick up our locally grown, butchered, and packaged meat, and then some family time. In between I worked on the Project Wide Gravel Wheels v2 and my bottle configuration on the pink Black Mountain Cycles MCD. 

Sunday I had to play guitar at church and then I waited until the evening to ride. Why? Because I needed to get some night riding done to wrap up a review on some lights for RidingGravel.com. I also was able to load up the BMC MCD as I would be riding it at Gravel Worlds. So, it was a double-purposed ride. Besides, it's been awhile since I've been out riding in the night.

So, after the evening meal I got ready to do a bit of a ride out South of town to see the lay of the land at night by bicycle. Fortunately the weather had straightened out and there wasn't much wind at all. In fact, it was almost perfect out. Almost except for the clouds of gnats! Flying protein snacks are not my favorite thing. I had to remind myself not to be a mouth-breather. 

The added bags on the bike are Bike Bag Dude Chaff Bags. I've used those a lot over the last ten plus years and - in fact- the one on the left side here is about one of the first Chaff Bags available. I got that about ten years ago. The other side, the left one, is like the newer ones which you can get you hand all the way into. I'll use the right one primarily as a water bottle cage. The left one will carry nutrition. The idea is to not have a top tube bag, (other than the gas tank style bag), and not have a saddle bag.

I got treated to a really spectacular Sunset.

This was where I had to finally turn on the lights.

Once I got out into the country I was relieved of having to keep breathing through my nose exclusively. The bugs were still around in large numbers, but at least they were aiming for my lights and not my head! Getting my lights sorted was fun. I had three lights and three tail lights to check out during the ride. 

Testing......one....two...three!

Well, it wasn't much of a long ride, but I did have a bit of a surprise at one point. I heard a dog, and well, I wasn't too concerned, but I did scan for the mutt and was expecting to see it converging on my path. You know- dogs are experts at that. And so, when I saw a large mutt taking a rather different line that would put him way off from converging on me, I was a bit confused. 

Then I saw an animal, about the size of a small dog, and white-ish in color, jetting across the road and I realized the dog had taken no notice of me, but was on the chase behind this unidentified animal. Whatever the dog was chasing, it was an expert climber because it went through the ditch and straight up the utility pole that was there lightning fast. It was rather startling. 

The dog, a German Shepherd, saw me then and I told him, "Good boy! You treed that animal! Good boy!" and the dog acted like I was its master and cowered and looked for affection from me, then took off to see that the varmint didn't escape. I simply rode away. That was a lot easier than I was expecting!

I heard a few deer running alongside the bike path on the way back in and I even came across another night-cyclist! Sometimes these shorter trips are the most interesting ones! Especially when they take you into the night.