Tue Wheel Tuesday: Night Light

Perhaps. Like the proverbial moth drawn to a flame, equal parts ecstasy and doom, I ride along the edge of the road, shifting toward the glow and opposing streams of red and white, downslope and far below. Close enough to the edge to brush against the dead, dry, though not yet decayed stalks of Spring and Summer. The darkness beyond only becomes disconcerting in those rare moments when something unseen responds with a scratch at my side, a tap on my back, or simply its own brush against my arm.

Tuesday evening things kept rising from the road in front of me, to my side, always just out of the beam of my head light, darker than the night's dark sky. Things kept rising in absolute silence, though their sudden movement should have made a sound. At first I though "bats" but, though these spectral forms wheeled and turned with agility, they did so without the erratic twists of those furry fliers. They didn't make that "get me out of here" sound that doves make when startled, so I finally decided they must be owls. Why there were so many owls (well, five or so anyway) in the middle of the rocky road... I don't know.

Anyway, there didn't seem to be many mountain bike riding riders at the brewery to start the ride, but there sure were a lot in the park. I paused atop one hilltop aerie to look around. There was a single headlight over from where I had just come, another descending (very quickly) over there, one loping up the Coyote Trail, and yet a fourth one over on that long climb from Picnic Valley. Neither did any of those single lights belonged to the trio that I chased down two weeks ago and, again, tonight.

I don't know that I would call any of the lights seen from the trail on Tuesday "welcoming" - that green, wispy, ephemeral one was just plain weird - but there were some that made that description especially apt, the lights of the tap room at La Verne Brewing Company - thanks for the pizza, ready and waiting and, roadies, sorry for not leaving any of the good stuff.

I know, it is spelled wrong. Clever ain't it?