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The NITE (Navigate Indy This Evening) Ride and the Hilly Hundred are the two major events put on by the Central Indiana Bicycling Association. I rode in the Hilly last year, but this is my first NITE Ride. There are events to participate in the entire day up to the 11 pm start of the ride.

I rode to the Major Taylor Velodrome, where the ride starts, as I always find it somewhat counter productive to drive a few miles to attend a cycling event. That meant that I had to bring everything with me, so I loaded up all 4 panniers and headed south. Riders were allowed on the velodrome from 4 to 6 pm. I had never been there before, so why not. I was amazed how much bank the turns have, but I guess you need that considering the tight turns. It is a little annoying to have to carry your bike under the stairs to get on the track. It seems like it wouldn’t be that much of a problem to allow the NITE Ride participants to enter through the sides of the track, the way the racers do.

The biggest problem with riding on the velodrome, is that you get the need for speed. The turns are banked and you want to be going fast enough to have to use that bank. You also have people watching above and cheering you on. After a couple laps around 28 mph, I coasted for a while so my heart would stay in my chest. Then I gave it another couple hard laps and drifted to a stop at the center. I carried my bike back down the stairs, under the track and back up the stairs. Then I grabbed my camera and took some pictures.  The last picture at the bottom really shows the banking in the turns.

Speed forward past the few brats I consumed at the concession stand. Through the hour of rain and the thunderstorm that thankfully passed south of us, but gave a nice light show for a while. You reach 11pm and the start of the night ride. I should mention here that you want to get Valley Bikes trailer at rides. It makes a great recumbent garage for those unexpected rain showers. Bents and trikes were packed into the trailer and stayed nice and dry. I had planned on rain, so I just put some rain covers over my panniers, made sure everything was in a dry bag and put a garbage bag over my seat.

After an instrumental rendition of the National Anthem, and a small fireworks display, we were off. Well, not exactly. The ride takes a good bit of time to get rolling. So our group of recumbent riders sat and watched the crowds slowly ride/walk by.

The delay gave me time to whip out the tripod and snap some pictures of the group. In photo 1 below, the riders aren’t going more than 5 mph, but the shutter open for a full second makes them look like they are really cruising. You can see the two Tioga Comp Pool tires strapped to the right side of my rear pannier (lower left of the picture). This made it look like I was seriously loaded touring. I actually just purchased them from Dave and was hauling them home. But I got a kick out of all the “Man, he’s got everything but the kitchen sink there!” type comments.   (To which I replied, “Can’t use the sink, ’cause I don’t have the running water working yet.”)

In the picture 2, you can see the slight modification of my front wheel, just for the NITE Ride. I added 8 fishing glow sticks in 2 circles of 4. They were a big hit, and I got some cheers from the people watching the ride from cars or the side of the road and complimentary comments from other riders. I can’t help it, I always seem to have to make myself different.

When we finally got going, traffic wasn’t moving very fast. I ended up just walking for about half a mile, instead of trying to keep the bike balanced while moving that slow. The trike riders had a serious advantage there! After a mile, we started moving around 9 mph. Fast enough to actually enjoy the riding. I didn’t realize how much traffic control we were going to get, but every light we came to had at least one police officer or sheriff to hold the cars up and let us pass. We owned the city, and it was great! I am sure that this seriously irritated a few people, but it was hard to feel sorry for them as the other drivers were out of their cars and having fun cheering the riders on. The air was saturated with moisture and it gave the ride a dreamy quality as we rode through the mist and very light fog. The Capitol building, in picture 3 below, shows the moisture in the air, as the buildings less than a mile away are slowly fading out of view.

I wouldn’t be right if we didn’t ride around Monument Circle, and we were not disappointed. It was confusing at first to see the riders heading east, as we were going south. People were asking if we missed a turn, because there was no road to take us west before we would meet up with the east bound traffic. We quickly realized that after a right turn we would ride west, do a 180 around Monument Circle, and head back east. You can see both directions of bicycle traffic in the shot below.

About half way through the ride, there was a sag stop. I really didn’t need anything but water. Being at night, I could even do with the couple of ounces I had left to finish the 10 miles back. The long, long lines at both the snack station and the port-a-potties, assured me I would be able to do without for the next 10 miles.

The ride routed through the area I usually use to ride home from downtown, but backwards. I thought we would be riding south on Martin Luther King, Jr., but the gates to the Art Museum were open and the trail was lit with little lights in some type of bag. I should have stopped to snap a picture or two, but I was just enjoying the ride. As we came out the front of the museum lot we had a lane to ourselves on 38th street, separated from the traffic with lines of orange cones. It was definitely less stressful than my usual ride from White River to Martin Luther! I pulled back into the velodrome and lined up for the Fazoli’s spaghetti dinner. Then I got some water, and set out for the ride home. I got home just after 2:30 am, took a shower, set the VCR to record Channel 8 morning news, and fell asleep.

I forgot to mention that Dave Doty and I were interviewed for Channel 8’s coverage of the NITE Ride. It is great to see them covering cycling events in the area. This is two weeks in a row I made it on the Saturday evening news (I was interviewed at last weeks ADA Ride).

What will I have to do next week to keep up the trend? The report is available for viewing (Channel 8 Nite Ride Report - 3.8 Mb), and requires player that will handle Windows Media Player format.