My first Urban Assault

[BikeArkansas]

They call the ride "Urban Assault" so I call it the same thing. I rode that ride tonight. It started at 6:30 PM, which is well after full dark. There were around 20 riders. I believe all but two were riding either a full mountain bike or a hybrid, such as my Gary Fisher Montaire "29er", which has a front fork and disc brakes. One of the two road bikes crashed and caused some injuries, but the ride still went on.

Most of the riders were way over my head, but enough were close enough to me so that I could stay with the second group. We mostly stayed together, except on the hills where the better riders took off. Then we would split into a slower group and a faster group. It was understood at the start that this was not a "no drop" ride, but we did re-group from time to time.

It was quite a sight seeing all the bikes rolling through the city with all the lights on and keeping some very good speeds. With all the mountain bike tires it was often very noisy with all the rubber on the pavement. On the flats the speeds were mostly in the low 20s, which I found fast for these type bikes and at night, but this was my first ride of this type and no one else seemed to think this was fast.

I found the action a little overboard at times, but it was quite a rush and I will probably try it again. The total time was about 2 hours, but we were held up once by the crash and once due to a mechanical problem. We rode a total of 25 miles which made our average low because of the two long stops.

[Beverly]

This sounds like a fun ride.

I like riding with lights but still prefer the trails to streets after dark. Drivers in our area don't see too many night time riders.

[tsl]

Our Tuesday Night Urban Assault (TNUA, but everyone calls it "tuna") is my favorite ride. It runs from October through March and I miss it terribly for the rest of the year. We seem to get a larger variety of bikes. Until the dead of winter, only about half are MTBs or hybrids.

Ours is also no-drop. Everyone gets a number at the start and we count off at stops to be sure everyone is with us. (Which is how I know how many riders there are.)

Last night we had 57 riders. (The record for this season is 69.) Larger groups like last night means we can't all fit into some of the more interesting places to ride, although we spent some time on the stairs and wheelchair ramps along the river before shooting out to one of the parks. Now that I have two sets of wheels for my Portland, I'm learning stairs--working on down the stairs first. Maybe next time I'll try riding up them.

Other nights we ride through parking garages, the University, other parks, the High Falls entertainment district (where there's a great hill for repeats) and my favorite, the cemetery. Wherever we go, it's fun and empowering to be riding in a sea of blinkies. Cars stop for us, and people cheer as we ride by.

[BikeArkansas]

Other nights we ride through parking garages, the University, other parks, the High Falls entertainment district (where there's a great hill for repeats) and my favorite, the cemetery. Wherever we go, it's fun and empowering to be riding in a sea of blinkies. Cars stop for us, and people cheer as we ride by.

One thing I did not mention was that cars did stop for us on several instances. It is interesting that the same happens on your rides. I also did hear some cheering, but some of the yelling was not cheers.
Part of our ride was on roads and part was on trails. Actually we had a choice of going up a steep dirt single track to Fort Roots or ride the paved road. I do not have knobby tires on my hybrid, so I stayed with the paved road.
One reason I like to ride my hybrid, which is more MTB than anything else, is that pot holes not seen in the dark are not as likely to cause a crash. I did hit one last night and my front wheel shock saved me.