The Girls' Ride

CODY, Wyoming, 1995

My running partner, Rickie, talked me into attending a weekly event known as The Girls' Ride one summer Wednesday after work. Until now a running purist, I loaded my K-Mart Huffy onto the cheap trunk rack I attached to my little Ford Escort and arrived at the bike shop a little before 7 pm. Maybe a dozen women of various ages (plus a couple of guys) rolled away from the shop and up the hill toward Red Lakes for a rollick along the singletrack that flowed through canyons and along ridges, pausing occasionally to pass around Scary Mary's flask of whiskey as we admired the sprawling Wyoming evening landscape.

Our arrival back in town coincided nicely with the onset of darkness and we convened at the Silver Dollar Saloon for pitchers of Killian's Red and potato chips dipped in ranch dressing (we were starving and the grill was closed). We knew nothing of Night Riders and had no need to lock our bikes outside the bar.

Recognizing the limitations of the Huffy, the following week I took a rental bike from the shop. The week after that, I bought the bike, a lightly used purple Cannondale M500, aluminum with no suspension. The Girls' Ride was a habit and an addicting one. I groped my way through Thursdays on a hangover and lack of sleep, often rolling into bed around 2am. But they were so worth the fun and camaraderie of our Wednesday night escapades.

During the next two years, our adventures included missing sunset and feeling our way along the trail in pitch dark, or if we were lucky, by moonlight; trips to the emergency room when a fellow rider crashed while A) riding too fast along a dark trail, B) riding the stairs by the Buffalo Bill statue, or C) riding too-steep sections of slickrock near the petroglyphs; expeditions that involved car shuttles and late-night flat tires; and best of all, the group getting so big that we banned boys altogether and started splitting into groups.

My last summer in Cody, 2000, it was common to have 20-30 people on a given Wednesday night. This in a town of 8,000 people!  The Cannondale, front suspension added, served me well for 9 years and the boy I met one Wednesday night in 1997 is still with me today.