Big lights, log plates, hornets and lost ravers
I’m lightly shredded and slightly hung over as I write this post.
It’s the end of September and the weather is staying mostly good. We know this won’t last, so we always aim for an end of summer BBQ at the trails.
We set out with some daylight left, riding with heavy bags of food, beer and the usual minimal set of trail tools.
One of the riders was so overloaded, mostly with beer and meat, he went over the bars and to the right on the long steps at the start of the trail. After some incoherent yelling, we turned back to rescue him. I found him standing beside and below the trail in a freshly punched person-hole! No injuries thankfully, but this would not be a good place to fall when riding alone… He was standing on a ledge, chest level with the trail, surrounded by plants, down a steep bank which continues down presumably all the way to the overgrown valley to the right. If he’d fallen further down the bank, I seriously think I’d have been dumping my stuff there with him and returning home in a hurry for rope access equipment. I’m very glad this wasn’t necessary, but this was a close call. Like all these moments, only afterwards we realised photos would have been funny.
His stem had shifted on the steerer tube and he’d rotated the saddle to a funny angle during the crash. A comedy trail of destruction was visible where he’d swept plants and earth aside in the fall.
It turned out many other people also had the same general idea as us, to get out and make the most of the last of the good weather… there was an outdoor rave happening very near by.
Midway along the trail, daylight faded enough for lights to be needed. A better helmet mount is needed for these, two of us had to stop because of launching our lights during a difficult section.
We stopped where the large tree branch had fallen (features in another post) and we carried on cutting the thinner branches into manageable sections. Soon we had a good fire going and we cooked sausages, burgers and steak. Everyone brought an excess of beer!
As it got properly dark a distant whoomp whoomp whoomp from the rave was pretty continuous.
We forgot plates, so we cut some rounds from a log to use.
We were not far from the rope swing (also featured in another post) and decided to have a go. On a previous day we noticed we had attracted a “large bee” near the swing… nope, there’s a nest and they’re probably hornets. Second nope, don’t point a powerful light at the nest. Having one flying at your head light seems to give you a nice frozen image to think about as you duck to avoid it and leave swiftly. With head lights on, we couldn’t stay around without attracting stingy-stripers, so we had a few terrifying low-light goes on the swing and left before our luck ran out.
We noticed that many small groups of people were walking through the woods lighting their way with phones and small torches. Most were finding their way and staying well clear of us.
We probably confused the hell out of one group when two of us heard voices in the distance and waved our head lights about on flashing mode for a few seconds and then went completely dark. Silently. I have no idea why but it was very funny to hear several people going “woah woah woah, stop stop stop, lights” ^_^
A young couple came towards us as we were packing up to continue our ride and we guided them out of the woods towards the assumed location of the rave. They had already been going in the right direction but had not found the right route and doubled back on themselves.
I don’t think they could believe anyone would try riding a bike where we were, even less in the complete darkness. They were amazed at the LED headlights we were using and followed us along the last of the trail to the gravel access roads.
We had guessed the location of the rave correctly and once we could see the way, we pointed them along the right dirt road and made our own way home.
We saw more people in the woods after dark last night than in the rest of the year combined. I’m guessing we left one couple with some weird stories to tell…
Taxis were coming and going on the roads nearby. At least a couple of them drove towards us with main beam of headlights on. They very quickly change their minds about this decision if any of us look directly at them with headlights on. An LED head light with a tight spot is far worse that main beam of car headlights to look into, and we know it. I guess this is a little lesson to inconsiderate drivers, but I would not like to do this anywhere that cars are moving faster than walking pace. Haha :-D
