Night lights and handguns – Canadian Cycling Magazine

“Got a light?” was the first thing he said after stopping us from night riding. Which was weird, because even in the dark I could see the glowing ember of a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“I need a light,” he said pointing to our obnoxiously bright mountain biking lights attached to our helmets and handlebars. This made a lot more sense.

It was a Saturday night and we’d come tearing up to him in the dark. We were hooting and hollering, just getting started on what is one of my favourite Saturday night activities: riding mountain bikes in the dark, as fast as you can through the woods. It’s so much fun. Even the trails you know by heart become adrenaline pumping adventures.

Now I’m sure we’d scared the hell out of this dude. If I was him, I’d have panicked, crouched in the woods and let whatever those noises and lights were pass. But, he didn’t hide, he had something else on his mind. He got directly in front of us, blocking the trail so we couldn’t get past. My friend Cory asked, “hey could we get by?” which was when he asked for a light.

And why wouldn’t we oblige? We were curious why he was out here, so we sidled up to him and shone our lights on whatever it was he was fumbling with. He muttered something about how we might see his girlfriend out here too. Then I saw what was in his hands;
I saw some bullets, what looked like a handgun and a pair of frantic fingers trying to load the clip. My first thought was, “oh cool, that’s a pretty badass looking BB gun.” I’d never seen a handgun outside of a glass case before.

But it was my friend Adam’s reaction that tipped me off. “No thanks man, we gotta go,” at which point he took off. Cory with him. I watched for a millisecond longer, as the guy spilled bullets all over the singletrack while swaying on his heels. I took off as fast as I could, hammering to catch up. A few minutes later, I yelled between my gasping breaths, “was that what I think it was?”

To which everyone responded. Yep. A handgun.

Quick lap goes long

What was supposed to be a short out-and-back ride became an epic. There was no way we were heading back in the dark towards a man with a now-loaded handgun. Instead we shouldered our bikes, sacrificed our dry shoes and plunged knee-deep into the rushing Bighead River.

While night-riding itself is a sure way to induce an adrenaline rush or two, throwing in a random dude with a handgun is a great way…