I’m writing this post at 4:11am. I went on another night ride earlier. These days I seem to be over-worked, over-stressed, and over-tired. Due to the latter of those things, I tend to have to stimulate my body as much as possible during the day, which leaves me with a ton of energy to release at night; instead of going out clubbing, I’ve taken to going on late-night/early morning bike rides instead. You can read about my first one here.

Riding at night is the most amazing thing on the planet for me right now. You’re hammering down an empty, dark road at 2am with nobody else around, often in the freezing cold and with your leg muscles burning because you’re so tired. Sounds like hell? Yeah, it does, but doing it has some pretty amazing and weird effects on the body. Firstly, riding at night tends to slip me into a state of (what I think) is pure bliss; I forget about everything else in the world, and my only focus is getting where I’m going. Any anger in your body is taken out on the pedals; and every cell in your body is alive. Everything trivial is forgotten about, but night riding also has some good effects on those emotions within you that you just can’t seem to shift easily. What night riding does is clear your head; it helps you to make decisions about things that previously you’d been too scared to make a final decision about. Hell, just during the two hours or so I was out riding earlier I’ve managed to clear my head and come to some important conclusions. It also gives you perfect time to contemplate things; strangely, I’ve noticed that you think about certain things subconsciously, and that you end up solving problems that you never even attempted to solve while you were riding. 

It’s an amazing, but shattering experience; I got back over an hour ago and still can’t see myself sleeping any time soon. 

I decided to go on an all-night bike ride with some friends tonight. I had ridiculous amounts of energy to release and didn’t fancy getting drunk, so thought it would be good to explore Nottingham completely aimlessly on our bikes. 

It all started with a McDonald’s at 1am to keep me going through the night:

We sneaked into an empty multi-storey car park and went right to the top, too:

I’ll probably do this more often. There are often times when I’m sat alone at midnight, everyone else is asleep, and I have a ton of energy; riding the bike is a brilliant way of releasing that energy. There’s no chance I’m getting to sleep any time soon, and my lungs are burning from the cold, but the experience was incredible. 

Throughout (pretty much) the entire ride, I was over-tired, cold, and still coughing my lungs out, but it felt amazing. There’s nothing quite like hammering down a road during the early hours of the morning with not a car in sight; I think I’ve found a state of utter bliss. You forget about everything in the world around you, and all you want to do is pedal and pedal. On the way home I plugged in my earphones, and when Brian Eno’s “An Ending” came on as I was hurtling through an empty South West Nottingham at 4:45am, I couldn’t (and still can’t) think of anywhere else I’d rather be.