Perhaps everything does happen for a reason sometimes..?!

Tonight we went for a ride after work again. Leaving work on dusk, we headed up, geared up with everything we own in terms of warm and windproof clothing and headed out into the darkness. Troy had his light on conserve mode (read: only using it in times of terror) and mine, well I forgot to charge it since last week so I was on low power only.

We rode out of Hotham village into the teeth of a howling gale (3 degrees thanks), with the wind ripping cloud all about, obscuring our view down to a matter of a few meters. We could only see the yellow line on the side of the road to see where we were going, as the dotted line in the middle was spaced to widely to see the next! Rolling down the hill, we managed to keep it upright, something made all the more difficult when you can’t see the corners coming up and you’re doing in excess of 50kmh. We ran out of real estate a few times, but bundled it all back together and kept it up the way it should be!

Down to ticket office we went, with the cloud stopping somewhere around the tree line, and we were able to open it up a little on the flatter sections. I had to pull the pin somewhere after the ticket office, as my lights were on the low power channel, and I needed them to get back up the hill. Turning around, I killed them for a moment, and enjoyed the full moon occasionally poking its head out and lighting all the burnt trees, looking amazingly ghostly, and so bright that it looked occasionally like a car coming in the distance. Back up the dammed hill, barely turning over the gear ( I got to deal with that one day, some climbing type gears…) and trudging my way back up the hill, dealing with hits like CRB hill, past Diamontina and the Razorback spur and finally up to the Cross, where my lights decided that they had enough of the dark. As they fizzled out, I had the sad realization that there would be a bit more ‘brail riding’, but just then, as if by some sort of perverse magic, the cloud lifted and the full moon shone down the valleys. It was almost like it was meant to be, without waxing lyrical, but to be able to see clear as day, after an hour of bashing through the clouds, was special… A little creepy, like someone was watching me, but special none the less!

With that, I was able to make it back home, another ride in the dark out of the way, and a bit closer to the You Yangs this weekend.