A beautiful night for a ride.

I signed up to join a 16ish mile evening ride that started in North Portland at 6:30 PM.   I decided that I should ride in from Sellwood Riverfront Park.  On the way there my mind wandered to yesterday's ride.  Suddenly I thought that Jan should be riding this ride too. After all, she is the Grand Pooh-bahette of the group that was sponsoring the ride.  It was short notice, but she made it to the park right at 6PM.  By the time she got her shoes changed and bike unloaded it was 6:05. We'd have 25 minutes to cover 8 miles. That works out to a 19.2 mph average.  Given that 4 of those miles are urban in nature, it was a tall order to fill.

We hit a few red lights, the trail had a few more people than ideal for making haste, but still we were within a mile of the ride start location as time expired.  We moved over a few blocks to backtrack the route in an attempt to catch them in progress.  There was a little wandering around, trying to follow a route backward is not as easy as it seems it should be.  We pulled out a smart phone to check the location of our goal, and found that the ride leader suggested that we meet at a point a few miles from the start.  It was too late for that now, but we started on the route, hoping to catch up with the others at some point.  Jan had left her car without taking her phone, and she was concerned about it sitting on the seat in plain view.  We planned to ride back to Sellwood, which was very near the far southern end of the route tonight.  We'd be backtracking the route as we pedaled the Springwater Trail so if they were fast, we'd meet them coming toward us.  If they were slow, our plan was for me to wait at the point the others would be accessing Springwater while Jan rode back to her car.  As luck would have it, as we neared that point, the others made the turn and rode toward us.

We all rode back to Sellwood with Jan to retrieve her phone.  While there our ride leader noted that he had a broken spoke.

photo by Alan

Since Jan's car was there he didn't want to try to fix it "good enough to ride" back 8-9 miles. Jan offered her car, and Neal loaded his bike up.  Jan, Alan, and I rode back northward.  The sun set as we made our way along Portland's waterfront.

photo by Alan

As we neared the ride's start/finish point, we met our ride leader riding back toward us.  He had used his waiting time to get the wheel somewhat ridable.  At this point, Jan was at her car, Neal was near his.  That just left Alan and I to ride back south.  Alan peeled off as we where near the Moda Center.  I continued along the waterfront.  It was a glorious night for a ride.

All of us ended up riding different distances, based on how many passes we made of this north and south yo-yo!  Neal made one trip south, good for about 8 miles.  Alan made a south and north pass, good for about 16.  Jan made a north, south, north run, good for about 25, and I did two full out and backs, good for 34 miles.

It was nearly magical out there.  Made me miss the night rides a friend and I used to put together.

.......Road bike........Rollers.......MTB.......Lifecycle....Total
Today.......34...............0..............0..............0..............34
Jan..........765.............0..............0..............0.............765
Feb..........248............0..............0..............0..............248
March......183...........0...............0.............0...............183
April........228...........0...............0.............0...............228
May.........200............0..............0.............0...............200
June.........199...........0...............26...........0...............225
July..........246...........0...............0.............0...............246
August.....502...........0...............0.............0...............502
Sept...........215...........0...............0.............0................216
Total........2786.........0...............26............0..............2812