Thursday nights we're meeting at the Park-N-Ride lot on 27th&Union, 6:30pm. We'll spend about an hour riding some local sagebrush singletrack. Come on out and join us!
The trails at St. Patrol are a LOT of fun to ride at night but they're not the only trails in the Tri-Cities. We're going to be varying the locations a bit to sample some of the other trails. If you'd like to lead a NightRide at another location, drop us a note. We're ALWAYS interested in new trails.

FEBRUARY NIGHTRIDE SCHEDULE
Feb 10 - St. Patrol trails
Feb 17 - Olympia St trails
Feb 24 - St. Patrol trails

CONTACT INFO: Kevin Axt (736-1331)

Check out this graphic that Beverly Calicoat sent me! Be sure to check out the rest of Beverly's Cybergallery! There's some very cool graphics in there! Drop her a note and encourage her to come out for a NightRide.

NightRiders at State Patrol Hills

Journal Entries (Send me your NightRide journal entry!)

Thursday (11/18/99)

8 riders showed up to illuminate the trails on a quiet Thursday evening. Four riders from Yakima (Rich Hart, Steve Kienzle, Russ Staples, and Phil Champoux) joined 4 of us from the Tri-Cities (Kevin Axt, Ercle Herbert, Bruce Cronin, & Craig Fortner).

I met Craig down at the Park-n-Ride on 27th Street. We rode up the road past the high school then too the little feeder trail over to the parking area. Just as we got there, Ercle was taking off into the night (thinking no doubt that we were already out on the trails). I finally got Ercle's attention and as we were talking, more and more cars kept rolling up. I haven't seen this many people out for an evening ride for a long time. Finally, we were all lined up and rarin' to go … but had to wait for Phil to show. We knew he was coming down so we just kept riding in little circles trying to keep warm.

When we were finally all ready, we rolled off into the night. Ercle, Craig and Bruce formed a lead pack and I hung out in the sweeper position. The trails are in really excellent condition after the rain that we've had. There are a few spots that have a groove worn into them but for the most part it was good traction and dirty fun. Somewhere along the line we lost the lead pack. I learned later that they had taken off down Big Tire from the top of Freeway. We continued on through Turpen's Crossover and then down to Slime. It was 2 Single Speeds vs 2 Gears in our group. Phil and I did our best to fly the freak flag high.

Somehow I got pushed into the lead position on our climb up F&J's. I wasn't really trying to go fast and I felt like if I went any slower that I'd be rolling backwards. (Phil told me on Sunday that he was having to work really hard to keep up with me). We then took on the twists and turns of New Trail. One person attempted to ride without any lights at the start … he promptly fell over. That in turn screwed with his brain so he wasn't able to get into any kind of flow for the rest of the trail.

We worked our way back up to the top of Big Tire and bombed our way down. I threw my chain twice (foreshadowing the Sunday race) and discovered the "new" feeder trail down from the parking area. I had a GREAT time and hope to see you out there sometime for an evening of fun.

Journal Archives
Thursday(Oct 14)
Thursday(Oct 7)

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