Conservation Foundation bids farewell to midnight bike ride

At midnight Sunday, July 29, Jill Johnson will stand back and watch 500 red, blinking lights ride off in the darkness as Eric Clapton's “After Midnight” plays in the background.

Those blinking lights will belong to bicyclists participating in the Chase the Moon Midnight Bike Ride to benefit the Naperville-based Conservation Foundation.

The ride will begin from the Warrenville Commons Shopping Center at the corner of Route 59 and Batavia Road in Warrenville and follow a route that will take riders through Fermilab.

Festivities will begin Saturday night in the shopping center's parking lot with a 10 p.m. pre-party, which will include music, food and stretching before the ride.

The cost is $40, $5 less for Conservation Foundation members, and $20 for children 12 and younger. Those interested can register at chasethemoon.com. Walk-in registration is $45 for all adults and $25 for children.

The ride raises between $15,000 and $20,000 each year.

“All money raised supports our programs, which are to preserve open spaces, improve water quality and environmental education and what we call sustainable development,” said Johnson, the group's marketing communications manager.

“When development occurs, we want to make sure it happens with the best possible relationship to the environment.”

The Conservation Foundation was started in 1972 by a group of influential people who were visionaries for that time and realized there was still undeveloped, open space that needed to be preserved, Johnson said.

“They wanted to make sure some of that remained for the future,” she said.

The ride was taken over by the foundation in 2006 and is in its ninth and final year.

“It was originally started by just two people who knew each other and wanted to do something good,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the ride's Fermilab location is fitting for the Conservation Foundation.

“There's prairie areas; there's wooded areas,” she said. “That really speaks to our mission.”

It's also fitting that the event is a bike ride, Johnson said, because people need open spaces to ride their bikes in, and the mission of the foundation is to preserve those areas.

“If you're a bicyclist, you need places to ride your bike,” she said. “It's a lot more pleasurable to do that in open spaces.”

Johnson said the darkness doesn't lend itself well to viewing nature during the ride, but riders can feel the open space that surrounds them and hear owls and other night sounds.

“You get to kind of experience that magic,” she said. “People love it. It's a neat energy that you can feel.”

This will be the ride's final year because of a change in Fermilab's policies about letting groups use the land. Johnson said there are no plans to continue the bike ride after this year, but she hopes its participants will find another way to get involved with the member-supported Conservation Foundation.

“We'll be sad to see it go, and obviously the revenue stream is important,” she said. “Mostly, it's just something quirky and fun.”

Donald Cooley of Wheaton is a member of the Conservation Foundation, and this will be his third year riding in the Chase the Moon Midnight Bike Ride.

Cooley said he's very interested in what the foundation does and is a participant in its “Conservation@Home” program.

His house is certified, meaning he's taken measures to conserve native plants and water on his property.

“It's a promotional thing for awareness,” Cooley said. “I'm very environmentally conscious.”

So it's only fitting that Cooley would also participate in the midnight bike ride. He said he is sorely disappointed to see such a great tradition go.

“Part of it is just that it's so different — going for a ride with 500 other people at midnight in a place where you don't have to fight traffic,” Cooley said.

On those rides, Cooley said he often finds himself alone for miles.

“Mostly, it was just me and the moon, and that was just a great experience being out there by yourself with nothing but your headlight.”