By Chris Heg
The Winter Solstice night ride is a 4 year old tradition invented by our own Joe Platzner. The rest of the world is slowly catching on.
Mark looks doubtful, Vinnie looks happy, James looks relaxed, and Robert, in pink, looks amused.
This year’s version was very wet – the rain never really stopped all night. Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold. Some of these events have been close to freezing. This time the temperature was in the mid 40’s and slowly rising through the night. Despite being wet through I could maintain a fairly comfortable equilibrium as long as I kept riding. Stopping caused a quick chill. Sort of like being a shark but instead of not being able to breath when you stop moving you just shiver a lot. Great incentive to stay on the bike though!
The start control. I would guess we had about 25 riders at the start.
One flat at 25 miles but otherwise no issues. Good times: riding alone, with old friends, and with new friends, on good trails and empty roads. Sign me up. 🙂
P.S. I have to put a plug in for my Busch&Muller Luxos-U headlight. The best light I’ve ever had by a long shot.
The “Rain Tree”, a decorated tree at Redmond City Hall that we passed near the finish. There was also a megawatt Christmas light display at a little house on Logan Ave. in Renton.
Oh, and thanks to Robert Higdon for the killer logo.
Thanks for the write-up, Chris. I’m just now sitting down to process the results. It was nice riding with you on and off through the night.
Credit — or blame — for the idea for the first SIR Solstice ride really goes to Mark Thomas. I just jumped in to try to keep it going. This was our fifth iteration. I get a tremendous kick out of it.
Thanks to David Roth, Lyn Gill, Geoff Swartz, Bill Dussler, and Eric Vigoren for helping out.
I’m looking forward to Hahn’s photos and post as well.
Joe P