The Night Ride

I went on a night ride last night.  Flako's been on them before and has a website he checks for meetups.  We were talking yesterday about doing something and he mentioned the bike ride.  It sounded fun so why not?  I have lights now anyway.  I was excited but nervous.  He's a wayyyyy better rider than I am and I don't like huge groups of people.  It was really cool.  I actually put the bike rack and my bike on my car and nothing fell off.  I was so sure I did it wrong, but I didn't do it bad.  We drove downtown, found the meetup and still had a bunch of time.  We rode around for awhile and tried to find batteries for his lights.  We were near Little Tokyo and went to a few places, but no place had batteries except for Office Depot.  We went back to the starting point and waited around for awhile longer.  There were so many people!  I was overwhelmed.  I don't think it helped that I really had no idea where we were going.  I set the little mileage thingy that I have to keep track of how far we went.  We rode for about six miles before stopping in Highland Park.  Flako stayed with me for most of the first part.  We stayed at the stop for close to an hour, I think.  Maybe not, but it seemed like forever.  It was probably close to that.  Then we rode for about 8 miles and stopped near Griffith Park.  I was getting tired by this point.  It was already about 11:45.  We stayed here for about 45 minutes.  There was a beautiful fountain and we walked around a little bit.  I was afraid to sit down because I was getting so tired.  We were standing around looking at the fountain and people watching when some guy crashed into me.  It was weird.  I wasn't hurt, pretty sure the guy was drunk.  We finally left the park and headed back downtown.  I was starting to get sore.  The last two miles were the worst.  I was tired, hungry, sore, and just wanted to be done.  The ride at the beginning was pretty slow and like the perfect pace for me, but it got really fast (for me) towards the end.  I'm so glad I did it.  Flako didn't stay with me as much during the last two sections.  He likes to ride fast, but he would hold back and find me to make sure I was ok and still with the group.  The last section, he was recording parts of it, but it turns out that his camera was on the wrong setting so none of the video worked.  :-(  The ride was really cool.  I'm not sure I'll ever go to one by myself, but maybe, if I ever get more comfortable with my bike.  Definitely an experience.