You'll want a light coming back
I left a little after two on Saturday, which in July would be plenty of afternoon. The plan was the orchard road: twenty-two miles out and back, mostly gravel shoulder and one long climb past the quarry. It was 58°F, with a light wind from the northwest. I had the old steel bike, the tires at 55 psi for the gravel, and a pocket full of apple money.
The maples along the creek have mostly turned, and the soybean fields are that dull gold that crackles if you ride close to the edge. Somebody was burning leaves near the second farm. I counted four woodpiles stacked so neatly they looked like they were trying to win something.
At the stand
The orchard had a folding table out front with half-pecks of Cortlands and a cash box. The woman behind it looked at my bike, then at the sky, and said, "You'll want a light coming back." I told her I'd be home well before dark. She just nodded the way people nod at a man who hasn't checked the sunset time since August.
I had. Sort of. I'd checked it in my head, and in my head it was still about seven-thirty.
The last four miles
Sunset was at 6:24. I stopped twice on the way back, once to fix a chain that had jumped off the small ring on a bumpy downshift and once to eat an apple I had no business eating yet. By the quarry the light had gone flat and blue, and by the creek it was just gone. The temperature dropped to 47°F in what felt like ten minutes. My fingers noticed before I did.
I did have a light, technically: the little rear blinker that lives on the seatpost all year. Up front I had nothing. I rode the last stretch at maybe nine miles an hour, staying close to the white line and listening for gravel. A pickup slowed down behind me and stayed back for a while, which I took as kindness and also as a comment.
What I'm changing: the front light goes back in the bag tomorrow and stays there until April. Thin gloves too. And from now on I leave by noon, or I go shorter. The apples were good, though. Slightly bruised, like my sense of time.