nighttime stealing my daylight

i met beth on kean around 6pm or so. we started riding with lights attached out on the canal trail. fumbled our way around a bit but found our way. one detour out to lagrange set our bearings straight and we continued on for a mellow evening into dark ride. we chatted, debated on where we were. went the wrong way a couple times. it was fun. i know palos pretty well but there are still some areas where i get confused. these are the grey areas.
we made our way to pretty little trail up burrito hill. we ran into a couple of guys at the entrance of out n back that scared the crap out of us. we scared the crap out of them too. we must have all thought "busted" at the same time. said hey for a minute or so, turned our lights on and headed down gravity cavity to the canal to head on back to kean.
we were stuck in the fisherman's lot before the canal trail for a bit as the tree cop was hanging out in the parking lot. all we could do was pee and hope he left soon. it wasn't long and we were on our way. reminiscing about the time we were on this huge group ride out at swallow cliff riding all the illegal singletrack and practically running into the forest preserve cops. we all ran into each other to stop before we exited the trail. stan, beth and a few others took off as john, tony, matt, myself and a couple others waited it out. we ended up turning around and just rode the same way we came and laughed about those "other guys" freaking out.
we made it back to kean and stan and the others hadn't made it back yet. a few minutes later we heard them all yelling at each other coming out of the trails itching like mad. they rode through everything and anything to escape the tree cops. i don't think i'll ever forget that. stan always makes things interesting.
anyway, we continued on the canal trail... when you first get on by the fisherman's lot there's an opening off to the left that has a huge view of the slough. it was a beautiful time of night to just happen to look across. i wish i had the camera and talent to capture that moment.
a bunch of chit chat, sticker bushes and downed logs later we made it back to our cars promising ourselves we'd do this every week until the weather made it impossible. i hope i keep that promise.