Last night we decided to go to the Greeley Moonlight Bike Ride sponsored and put on by the Greeley Police Officers’ Association. Registration was at 8:30pm and the ride was to start at 9pm. Unfortunately for us, we are now on the chickens’ schedule because we have to lock them up at night to protect them from attack which means we had to wait for them to go in their coop at dusk. When they finally put themselves to bed, we closed them up and were on our way to the Greeley Police Station on bikes.

On my bike on our way there

The Police Station is only probably about 1-2 miles from our house, so we were there in short order. They had an acoustic guitar band called Girls with Guitars playing when we arrived. We signed in, grabbed a free snack and enjoyed the music.

We had encouraged our friends Matt and Jamie (and their daughter Hailee) to come, but didn’t think they would. They surprised us by showing!

Matt and Britton at Starbucks

Me and Jamie with Police Car

The whole event is free and sponsored by area businesses in addition to the Greeley Police Department. They said they’ve been doing it for 16 years! How did we miss this all the years before? The police rode with us and police cars blocked off whole streets as we rode.

This is route- about 12 miles round trip

We rode from the police station on 10th Street went east on 8th Street, rode past downtown, rode up through UNC’s campus and Reservoir Rd, through Sanborn Park where boy scouts had set up luminaries down the path. It was really cool because they glowed as we rode past the lake. Then we stopped at the Starbucks in Westlake Plaza where they served us free drinks. That was our half-way point. At this point we could see how many people came out by the sheer number of bikes!

And of course, all the people. Here they (we) are waiting for them to call out the door prizes of which Britton won one!

Police guy is on the table yelling out prizes

From there we rode up 20th Street  to near 47th Ave and then turned into a neighborhood near 16th Street, rode through Bittersweet Park where the sprinklers were on! Everyone got soaked, it was pretty cool. Then we headed back in a round about way to the police station. I was amazed at the number of people who crashed going that slow. It was kind of funny once you knew they were ok. Now I know why they wanted everyone to have a helmet and light on their bike although they didn’t turn anyone away if they didn’t have either.

Once we were back at the police station they had free sandwiches from Jimmy Johns and drinks from a company called Oogave. They gave out a few more prizes and showed some biking clips on the big movie screen -a bike-in movie! We said goodbye to Matt and Jamie and headed back home by about midnight. And yes, the chickens were sleeping safe and sound.