Let me tell you about my ride last night….

It was a beautiful day late summer day in Cincinnati yesterday. The temperature never broke the 80 degree mark and by early evening it was already comfortably cool. I knew that I would have to ride, even if I ended up doing it in the dark.

I’d been off the bike for far too long. Saddle sores throughout late July and early August made any sitting uncomfortable, let alone sitting on a bike seat, and the effect on my mid-section was noticeable.

With school starting in less than a week, we got the kids to bed at a reasonable time and I proceeded to grab a jersey and a pair of bibs to head downstairs to the basement to get the bike ready. Silly me, I made a quick Facebook check that turned into a quick e-mail check that then reminded me that I needed to make sure that I had my hotel reservation squared away for Interbike.

On Facebook, I saw and liked a post by former Olympic cyclist Nelson Vails (if you haven’t already heard, he has a Kickstarter campaign running to to raise money for a biographical film project). We’ve talked before and he just happened to be online when I shared his post, and he popped up in chat to thank me for the share. I mentioned I was getting ready to he out for a ride and he implored me to ‘ride it like I stole it’. Prescient words.

Then I just had to get on the phone to my hotel in Vegas to confirm the room type.

No, it couldn’t wait, even though Vegas runs 24 hours a day. I just had to call, delaying me further. Of course, everything was fine.

As a result, it was completely dark by the time I got downstairs and started getting the bike ready. That wasn’t about to stop me. I ride in the dark all of the time. I have a couple of well-lit training loops that get very little car traffic, and, I have a good strong light.

I attached my light to the handlebar, hooked up the battery, confirmed that the light was strong, pumped up the tires and headed out the door, firing up my iPhone bike computer as I went.

Firmware update. Dang. I let it continue to load in the background and headed down the driveway.

I rode down the street and then made the quick dogleg across the Pike to head down into another part of the neighborhood. The road is a little twisty on the way to my regular flat loop, but I was still able to reach back and pull my phone out of my jersey pocket to check on the update.

After a few minutes, it was finally done. I made a quick stop to get everything synched together. I thought that all the various devices were talking to each other, so I continued on down the road. I didn’t need to record the ride, but it is nice to have a record.

It was about then that I realized that I didn’t have a helmet on.

My helmet is pretty light and fits me quite well. It makes sense that I could ride without it for a while without noticing, but here I was, in the dark, riding without a helmet. I was quite close to home; I could have turned around and got it, but I was already feeling as if I had burned a lot of time, so I rode on.

It was about then that I noticed that the status indicator on my bike light was flashing. Sure enough, within a short amount of time, the light faded, then went out completely. My bike light uses a large external battery. It had been a while since I’d given it a full charge. I should have known the risk, but I was fooled by its initial brightness.

There was no reasonable backup at home and I knew that I could dart between streetlights safely enough, so I continued to ride. There was even enough juice in the battery to give me a little bit of light in what I call the ‘crit corners’ – the several short little turns at the furthest point of my loop.

Still, here I was wearing black shorts and a red jersey on a mostly black bike in the dark with no helmet and no lights. It was about then that I noticed I was cruising right past the police station. From Cub Scout trips to the station, I know for a fact that we never have more than two patrol cars out on the roads at any given time, but I must have caught the shift change, as a police SUV pulled out of the lot just as I passed.

I really didn’t feel like having a conversation with an officer about my lack of good sense.

I darted down a side street to a road that ran parallel to my usual route, then took Nelson Vails’ advice to ‘ride it like I stole it’.

Once I was clear, I rode about five more laps. Not all that much in the great scheme of bike rides, but I needed it.

Most of all, I needed to prove to myself that I could actually do it. I had all kinds of reasons to stop, and very few to continue, but I rode on.