Girl's Night (Ride) Out

Sometimes, it's girl's night out.
So your husband takes the kids to the movies. And you, you get dressed up.
You put on your wool undershirt, your baggy knickers, your long sleeve pink and black jersey and your beaver socks. You wrap your light tightly on your helmet, pull your battery off the charger and slip it into your jersey pocket.
And you go into the garden and collect various flowers and you place them in a piece of tissue paper. And you go down into the garage and pull your bike off of the hook and place it near the front of the garage and you oil your chain. You put on your helmet and slide the bottle of wine into the water bottle cage holder, slide your shoes on and hold onto the flowers while steering and you head up to your neighbor's house. Her kids and husband are gone and she's hosting a girl's night out at her house.
But you can only stay for an hour. Because in an hour, it's girl's night (ride) out back at your house.
So you have a few glasses of wine. And you talk about your kids and how smart they are and what teacher they have and why they're better then all the other kids. And you have some chips and dip and you hold the baby of the mom who's new and you coo and laugh and smile and nod. And all the while you're looking at your watch.
And soon it's getting dark and you excuse yourself politely and say goodbye to all the other moms and you ride back down to your house.

Sometimes it's girl's night out and you have 10 women come to your house and they bring mountain bikes and lights and snacks and something to drink. And it's warm out and a tiny bit foggy. And someone brings their boyfriend.
And you tinker with your bikes and your lights and someone passes around a flask of something and you eat a few clif blocks and talk about how Erin hasn't really ridden her new bike yet, but this will be a good ride for it.
And then you all set out up the hill. You all ride quietly through the canyons until you hit the first trail. And single file, one by one each woman pedals up the first hill onto the first part of the trail and you ride. And it feels nice. And you smile.
And you ride and ride and ride.
Sometimes you take a left turn onto the single track and it's dark and foggy and you can see the trail and the stream of little headlamp lights up ahead and behind, bobbing and winding and flowing and following and you start singing to yourself. It's girl's night out and you wonder how many other moms are spending their night like this.
And you ride and ride and ride.

On girl's night out, sometimes you come to a fork in the trail and you all stop to make sure that all 11 are there and then Janet passes her flask around and you sip it and it warms your ears. And when you start up again there's more laughing and the single track flows just a little bit smoother.
Sometimes as you ride, you can hear your hubs buzzing and the cracking of the leaves under your wheels and the bumping of the tires against the roots and rocks but you can't see any of it because the fog has gotten thicker and your glasses are fogging up and your light is still pointed too far down from the last time you stopped and tilted it down because you didn't want to blind Sam as you were talking to her.
So you tilt your light back up as you're barreling down the trail and it helps a little bit.
And you ride and ride and ride.
And every so often you look down at your watch and think, this is girl's night out and my kids are in bed and it's late and I'm out here riding single track. And you take in a really deep breath and slowly let it out because you know that it's all very perfect right now.
Sometimes we make a wrong turn and back track a little bit and we have to look at the map to make sure we know where we're going. On girl's night out we use a map that Morgan has made for us, highlighted with arrows in the direction we should be going. So we turn around and take the trail that goes down, with Jennifer leading us.

And we ride and ride and ride.
Sometimes we get to the end of the single track on girl's night out and we take a left and cruise along the ridge looking for a way out. And we come to the end of the fire road and there's the real road and we realize it's over.
I look at my watch and two and a half hours has passed and I think, how can that be, we only just started. And Jennifer and I talk about where we should go next, but decide to ride back down to the house sensing that the others want to be done.
Sometimes it's girls night out and after our ride we eat pretzels and drink beer and talk about how we suck in our stomachs at the neighborhood pool while we walk around in bikinis and wonder if it's the last summer we can get away with even wearing bikinis.
This is how we spend girl's night out.