I’m not sure why it took us so long, but we finally had our first night ride of the season.

The time change occurred last night, so it got dark at 5:30pm tonight.  Given the limited daylight, we chose to start our ride at dusk on the Lebanon Trail and ride down to Loveland and back in the dark.

We parked at Kingsview Industrial Park and headed down the Lebanon Trail toward the Little Miami Trail.  The temperature was dropping quickly as the daylight disappeared.  We had our cycling tights on, full finger gloves, wool shirts, wind breakers, and even a light polypro skull cap under our helmet.  Things were still a bit nippy as the temp dropped to the low 40’s.  Penny is going to use her warmer full finger gloves next time, and we are both going to go with warmer tights and slip on the shoe covers to keep the toes warmer.

This was an incredibly peaceful 20 mile ride, and the maiden night ride on our Surly Long Haul Truckers.  Much of the trail was covered in leaves, the moon was full, the wind was still, and there was basically no traffic.  It just doesn’t get better than that.  It was kinda odd that the only traffic was two law enforcement officers in cars, a ranger and a local policeman, investigating reports of a deer down on the trail.

Hopefully we can continue to fine tune our layering and get in a couple more night rides before the weather prohibits any more…. in fact… we’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Surly Pugsley built up with 4″ fat tires for riding in many additional conditions than we can with our standard mountain bikes.

For a lot of years, I bike commuted, mostly in the dark.  If you are not hammering, dark riding can be fun.  It is especially nice under a clear sky with a full moon, as you found out! 

It really isn’t much of a problem riding in snow.  I did it for many winters.  When it gets really cold, you just add layers, opening layers as you heat up.  Mostly you need to protect hands and feet.  It can be extremely pleasant riding with heavy snow falling because of the way snow soaks up noise.  It just starts to get tough once you have more than 2-3 inches to push through.

I love riding at night.  It’s always so peaceful and quiet on the trails.

I’ve found the best thing for keeping the toes warm is the chemical toe warmers.  I never go out in colder weather without them..