Dancing in the Moonlight

So out of necessity, I learned how to ride in the dark. A career was born.

I don't know if it's genetics, or just something I acquired along the way, but I've always felt comfortable in darkness. I do have pretty good night vision. By star light, I can usually find my way around just fine, in the right terrain and moonlight is nearly as good as daylight. But it goes beyond that. I dig the darkness. When I step out into the night I feel right at home. To me darkness feels like a well-tailored set of leathers. I'll use a light if I have to, but mostly I'm able to do without. I've ridden dirt bikes, skied, climbed and run mountain trails for years in the moonlight, (and sometimes starlight) mostly without incident. Terrain is transformed at night. Moon and star lit landscapes are remarkably austere, without the color, contrast and depth that sunlight provides. I like that.

Mostly, I confine my nighttime riding adventures to dirt bikes, but riding a street bike at night has some of the same benefits for many of the same reasons, though you do have to allow for a precipitous downside. I wouldn't recommend under any circumstances forgoing a headlight on a public road. But riding at night, even by headlight, forces you to concentrate on what's illuminated. That's what's infront of you and with correct headlight aiming, it's where your focus should be anyway. Night forces you to ignore what is extraneous. Riding your favorite canyons at night will sharpen reflexes and improve your concentration. Just take it easy and watch out for deer. No less of a luminary than former MO intern and quintessential go for it guy Timmy B. will, I believe, readily attest to the concentration required by nighttime canyon strafing.

Back in the halcyon days, I was the king of the no headlights off-road nighttime driving challenge. One time, my fiancee and I were 4-wheeling across the desert near Shiprock NM. In the daylight, Shiprock dominates it's surroundings and is easily visible for many miles. But that night, it was lost in the glare of the headlights - a problem I cured by turning them off. Yowsa! There it was framed about as dramatically as one could imagine against the background of a full moon. Even my future ex fell silent in mid rant because it was pretty darned cool. We were both digging it. I should have been paying more attention to the road though. It'd been raining and flash flooding had opened up some huge, deep dry washes right across the road on which we were driving. We found out about the first one when we arrived at the bottom of it. I don't think I'll ever forget crawling out the window of the truck, scrambling back up to level ground and turning around and see my brand new 4 x 4, nose down like the Titanic in the North Atlantic, with a moonlit Shiprock rising like a majestic spectral iceberg in the background. It was truly a sight to behold. For a brief time I was transfixed, to the point that I was barely aware of either my immediate predicament or the noisy harangue, now making up for lost time, coming out of the hole in the ground. The reverie might have gone on longer, if and I swear this is completely true, the sky had not opened up and began dumping rain in biblical proportions.

Up here where I live, we have a great desert that forms the plain of the Snake River for hundreds of miles. I don't know how much sand, lava and primitive road there is out there, but I've ridden most of it after dark. Lava flows and sand in particular, are easily reconnoitered at night (I'm sure that a number of you out there in MO land with flyweight two-strokes, will have experienced nighttime desert excursions - even if it wasn't on purpose). The cool thing about riding the desert at night, is that usually you can hammer it, especially if the moon is up. There are some things you have to be careful about though. Low contrast changes depth perception - so it's best to be cautious about going for the big dune moonlight air unless you've done a few low-warp practice runs. Recently a friend of mine got enough air off a dune we came up on unexpectedly that we considered radioing ahead to the tower to have them foam a runway. The only thing was, of course, that he didn't mean to. It's easy to get carried away. On that point, the other thing is don't run out of gas. Nothing piles insult on top of injury, worse than arriving at the nearest gas station at 5 a.m., after having walked all night to get there, only to discover that it doesn't open until 9 a.m.

A few dozen XR600R dead lifts later I was much more convinced about the value of aggressive preventive maintenance. Another time, I set out on a 60 mile round trip on my old dual sport,to the top of a large butte way out in the desert. The ride up went fine, so I was loose and ready for a ripping ride back down. The first stretch on the way down was a long coast, through moderate terrain well suited to engine braking. At some point, while on auto pilot, the front brake lever fell off. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until the very steep and rocky second part of the descent. The upshot was a long and ignominious limp, out that provided ample time to contemplate the wisdom of safety wiring and checking nuts and bolts against torque specs. At least it didn't rain.

That's about all of the wisdom I have to impart on this. I'll be interested in hearing about your adventures in the dark. The normal disclaimer applies so if you read this and go out and break your neck you should know that not only do I actually not exist but I made it all up anyway. Be careful and have fun.