The mantra, “ride like it’s your last time,” is one I’ve heard or read many times. It’s a statement functionally equivalent to, “live every minute,” or “give’r hell.” But I’ve never thought of as more than just a clever phrase.

I have always enjoyed a mountain bike ride. No matter how difficult the trail may be, I always enjoy having ridden. Time and weather permitting, I ride my local trails as often as I can throughout the summer. Although the thought lingers in my mind that the summer will be over way too soon and the trails will close once more for the winter, even my last ride of the season is tempered by the knowledge that spring will eventually dry the trails again. The full impact of that phrase, “ride like it’s your last time,” hit me just this past weekend.

We had piled bikes into a couple mini-vans last Sunday and caravanned for a day trip to Kettle Moraine State Park, about an hour drive north. Chit chatting in the car pool on the way home, and planning another upcoming bike trip, my friend said next weekend would be his last ride. I did not immediately grasp the scope of his comment. I thought, well, ok, he won’t be joining us on the next day trip, but he’d make another one soon. After all, the next trip wasn’t planned for two more weeks.

He couldn’t make it, he said. Next Sunday would be his last ride because Monday he is having knee surgery.

While I lament my last ride of the season, my last ride is usually not until November. His season was ending mid-summer. No more dust in the mouth, no more leaves in the face, no more of the camaraderie of a group ride for him this year. With successful physical therapy he might be back on a bike sometime next summer, but no guarantees.

For me, “ride like it’s your last time,” is a phrase I now take literally.

I heard of the Chicago L.A.T.E. Ride last year from some buddies at the Rockford Bicycle Company, who described flashing red lights far ahead, and headlights far behind. It seemed hard to believe what 10,000 bicyclists looks like in the middle of the night on the streets of Chicago. So I committed to the ride this year.

My wife, Heather, and 12-year-old daughter, Allison, joined me on the 25-mile ride. We caravaned the 90 minutes or so up I-90 from Rockford to downtown Chicago and arrived at Buckingham Fountain around 10:30pm. Checked in, got our numbers and t-shirts, and found a grassy spot to park and rest before the 1:30am start. McDonalds was the major sponsor, so there was plenty of free coffee and various McDonald’s characters milling around. Ronald judged the Best Lit Bike and the Best Decorated Helmet contests. Chelsea Peterson, who has done the ride every year since she was 8 years old, won the Best Decorated Helmet contest with a diarama of the Chicago skyline during the L.A.T.E. Ride mounted to her head.

The ride got under way at 1:30am and the peleton of 10,000 was truly amazing. A river of bikes flowing through the streets of the Loop. We rode through Greek Town at bar time where partiers hooted and cheered and slapped hi-fives to the passing bikers. We cruized at a slow pace, after all it’s not a race, through stop signs and red lights where Chicago’s finest closed the streets for us, and made it to the rest stop, half way through the ride, at about 3:30am. The others in our group had passed my wife, daugher and I early in the ride, but surprizingly we found them in the park almost immediately.

Some bananas, granola bars and Gatorade, and we were back on the street, headed East, back downtown for the second half of the ride.

We reached Lake Michigan on the north side of Chicago and turned South onto the bike path. The John Hancock building and other illuminated skyscrapers of the Chicago skyline reflected in the water as dawn broke over the lake. The sky slowly brightened as we made our way south, past Navy Pier toward the museums and the aquarium and finally back to Grant Park, where McDonald’s kindly supplied breakfast and coffee.

We were tired and sore, but energized and excited to have finished the ride. Looking forward to doing it again next year. We’ll have a segment in the Episode 7 of TrailTapes Mountain Bike TV.

Thanks for putting up with the bogus posts the past few days. We’ve just upgraded the WordPress blog to version 2 and installed the podPress plugin to help publish the TrailTapes video podcast. The upgrade gives us an easier posting interface for both regular blog posts and podcast posts, plust offers some additional tracking mechanisms. But we had to work out a few issues. All should be well now and Episode 7 will be posted the first week of August using the new software.

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Sorry for all the testing. We’ve just upgraded to v2 of Wordpress and trying to get some setting straight.

 Test Podcast file: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Test Podcast Post

 Episode 6: TrailTapes Mountain Bike TV: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

TrailTapes interviews Gary Fisher. TrailLogue features some urban night riding submitted by Adam Sparks in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. And we get some email from around the globe.