Moonlight Ramble

The Moonlight ramble is a midnight bicycle ride held on the Saturday in August closest to the full moon. Typically there are over 10,000 riders. I had never done the it before but I had always wanted to. I mentioned to Rachel in July and she was excited about doing it.

The weekend before the Moonlight Ramble we did a ride to get ready. We did 9 miles on a very hot Saturday. This was a new personal record for distance for my daughter. The weather cooled off in the next few days so we had great temperatures for the ride.

We headed to the start at about 10pm on the 13th. I wanted to get there early because we hadn't pre-registered. They were so well organized that it only took a few minutes to register. Since we had some time to kill we wandered around and bought some Ted Drewes. Rachel really wanted to do the long route (17+ miles). I told her that I we could try it but I would ask her again once we got to the point where the routes split. There was a lot going on in downtown Saint Louis that night: the Moonlight Ramble, a Cardinal game, a Rams preseason game, and a Taylor Swift concert.

They release the riders a few hundred at a time so it takes a while to get everyone on the road. I was a little worried that we might be the slowest riders but that was not a problem. The streets are closed off so we did not have to worry about cars, but we did have to worry about other riders. Only about half the riders had any sort of lights. I had put my extra lights on Rachel's bike so she had both headlights and tail lights. At one point another rider said that he thought we were a car coming up behind him with our headlights side by side.

Rachel had a great time and had no problem choosing the long route we we split off. There were a few time that the large number of riders cause some congestion but no real problems. Rachel listened to my suggestions and improved as the ride progressed. We were both annoyed by all the speed bumps in Tower Grove Park.

After we finished the ride, Rachel was willing to ride back to our car on the street. She normally doesn't like riding where there are traffic lights but her confidence was very high. She was already talking about doing this next year.