Gone Batty

It's been a strange week here in the Capital District, with temperatures soaring into the upper 60s and low 70s. For November, this is beyond odd for Upstate, NY. But it has made for a great week of playing outdoors during this last week of care-free training.

But things weren't entirely rosey this week - Here's one for you: Yesterday, with the temperatures being near 70 in the afternoon, I took to the roads early from work to bask under the late afternoon sun, and conclude my transition period of training this year by a multi-hour mountain bike ride. Because today, Saturday, is the first day of the new season. At the start of the ride, I stood about my car going through the checklist: Riding clothes... Check. Lights charged up and mounted... Check. Air in the tires and shocks... Check. Mp3 Player locked and loaded... Check. And with that, I was off.

After an hour of rolling along, the sun was officially setting at around 5:15. Glancing over the hills at the salmon pink skies, I took a deep breath and secured a mental photograph of the scene, as I knew it would likely be one of my last warm, outdoor rides for a while. The trail darkened, and the lights went on. Twisting and turning through the singletrack, tossing up leaves as I rocketed down the descents, snapping twigs and tossing rocks on the long uphill grinders... Life was good. At about an hour and fifteen minutes in, I noticed a very unusual phenomenon - leaves were falling in front of my face in the narrow corridors of the singletrack and just sort of... Hanging... Or bouncing up and down in my line of sight before falling out of the glow of my lights. It was almost like these leaves were, uh, flying. And then it hit me. Literally. THWACK! A "leaf" hit my helmet. Hard. And suddenly, as I was ramping up the speed on another long descent, THWACK, THWACK!

"Wait a second" I thought. "These aren't leaves!!! These are... These are... Gulp... These are BATS!!!"

Apparently, a combination of the warm weather and the late season was just enough to stir up all the bats for a Friday night buffet, of sorts, for the nocturnal. And here I was, going "head to head" with them, so to speak. Completely freaky. But as much fun as this was (said with the highest degree of sarcasm), there was more to my night. After the bat population began to dissipate, I put the power back on and began the long grind back to my car. Rolling down a slight drop, I splashed my front wheel into a tiny little mud puddle, tossing up a spittle of mud in between my face and my glasses, and into my left eye. Right into my eye, and onto my contact lens. I'm not sure how many of you have had mud or dirt on your contacts, but it feels a bit like sand paper on the underside of your eyelid. Needless to say, the only solution was to remove my contact and toss it out. Now I'm riding along, pitch black, bats bouncing around here and there, and my vision essentially only out of one eye.

"What else could go wrong?" I thought. And then, as though the Gods of misfortune were reading my mind like a book: Cha- Cha- Cha- CHANG! My chain broke, and got sucked between my chainring and chainstay. Loooooooong Sigh.

After a brief fix-er-upper job on the trail by headlamp, and a litany of curse-word combinations, I was back on the bike and heading home. Only able to use my big chainring, and of course, only uphill to the car, it was a long, slow trip. But, as I tossed the bike on top of the car and packed things up for another night (season?) I paused to enjoy the warm air around me. Something that in a few months, I'll be craving, even if the price of it comes with a broken down bike and a pisser of a ride.