Another night ride on the SART

Last week Amber and I tried an alternative route on Paseo de Valencia to avoid that dangerous intersection of Cabot/La Paz/Muirlands and the I5 interchange. It adds a mile and 100' of climbing but we both agree it is much safer so I'm altering the route for the second loop of October's 400k to use this detour. Because it adds that extra mile I can move the turnaround from the nuclear power plant to a vista point which has the unexpected bonus of net reducing the climbing for this loop by 100' bringing it under 4000'

Here's the truncated route we rode with the detour starting at mile 45.7. The official route will be on Los Alisos but the bike path will be an option if you're familiar with it. I suspect the majority of randonneurs have no idea how much effort goes into designing a route. I wonder if people think I comp Amber just because she's my daughter. No, we are both heavily involved in test riding all my routes.

It has been so hot lately I've been riding the SART at night but I'm still worried about them locking the gates on me so I'm just riding from Yorba Linda park to Katella and back repeatedly. I started at 8pm yesterday so the temperature was in the mid 70's and the wind was dying down. It was almost dark and it was quite lovely.

I'm riding with my Cygolite Expilion set on the lowest setting, my Edelux II dynamo light, and a cheap but useful helmet light on the lowest setting. On the back I have my new Bausch dynamo brake light and a Cygolite spot tail light. The two complement each other very well because the Cygolite is VERY bright but has a narrow beam whereas the Bausch has a very wide beam.

I thought it would be interesting to video with the lights in my normal riding mode (lowest settings) and also with all the lights turned full on. Here's the normal riding mode...

.. and here's all the lights at their brightest settings ...

There were a surprising number of cyclists using the SART even at 11pm. Many of them had no lights at all and some of them had no tail lights. It's only because I had exceptional lighting that I didn't run into the back of them. This guy had a tail light but for some reason didn't think he needed to turn it on. He was wrong.

However, most of them had really great lights...

I ended a little after 11pm with 50 miles and over 800'' of climbing (lol I'm no mountain goat). Average speed was 16.1 mph. Time off the bike was only 6 minutes according to my ELEMNT.

The gates at Katella were still open at 11pm so this is two Friday nights in a row they haven't locked the gates. Looks like a pattern.