Jedi RIde

With the shorter days of Fall, my weekday road rides get switched to my weeknight mountain bike rides. One of my favorite venues is Buffalo Mountain in the Cherokee National Forest. Last night The Great White Goat and me set out on a 1:45 ride 1:30 before dark. Yeah baby, perfect night for a Jedi ride.

We leave the parking area and begin to climb immediately. I don't ride here much in the Summer and I was impressed with the work that the USFS had done to the road. It was in pretty bad shape at the end of last Winter. Roughly 5 miles later, we are at the gate below the fire tower and ready to hit the blue trail (technically it is the orange trail but it was the blue trail before it was the orange trail and it will always be the blue trail to me). The blue trail is the only legal OHV trail in the Cherokee and it is heavily used by motorcycles and atv's. It gets regraded once a year or so and for a few weeks after, it is a blast to ride.

We got it in prime time.

We started down and had the sun just disappearing behind the ridge. We had about 45 minutes of daylight left and about and hour to ride still. We hammered! After the blue trail, we dump onto a connector that takes you on down to yet another sweet descent and back to the fire road. (the names have been changed to protect the innocent). Towards the end, it is getting hard to distinguish between rocks and leaves and you really have to use the force to avoid some wicked tank traps at the very bottom just before the fire road.

We made it back just as the last remaining light disappeared, thoroughly stoked to be alive and riding our bikes.

disclaimer: Mountain Biking is inherently dangerous. Mountain Biking in the dark without lights is not only dangerous but stupid as well. Do not attempt to do this on your own or even with someone else.
Leave the stupid stuff to the pro's.