“We’re the downhill coalition!” shouted Jeanette Evans, slapping high-fives with a group of friends donning headlamps and orange reflective vests in preparation for a midnight bike ride on a high, remote stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway last week.

The barefoot brigade would have been an equally suitable team name. Since peddling was not on their agenda that night, foot gear was optional.

“Now I’m going to look bad,” said Brent White, the only one out of the four sporting socks and shoes and, coincidentally, the only one not hopping and dancing about to avoid contact with the cold pavement.

With a hoot and a whoop, the group of Sylva bikers soon disappeared into the darkness. A blue pennant that read “Relay for Clean Air” flapped behind their bikes and advertised their mission to all the literate nocturnal critters lurking along the Parkway that night.

The midnight ride — an all downhill coast — was one of dozens of segments that would comprise a 24-hour, 100-mile long relay from the state line in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Asheville in support of clean air. The relay was organized by the Canary Coalition.

Executive Director Avram Friedman of Sylva billed the relay as a civil rights march on the premise people have a right to clean air, but that right is being violated daily by political and corporate interests. (See page 18 in the editorial section for Friedman’s opening statement at the Relay’s kick-off.)

The barefoot brigade passed off the torch — or rather the blue pennant — to Friedman and his son, Zev, who pulled a four-mile uphill leg toward Waterrock Knob where a group of five more riders from Sylva waited in the darkness. The high peak on the Haywood-Jackson countyline was encased in a cloud, creating a fog so thick that cyclers had to holler into the swirling air to locate each other. Technical difficulties arose due to the damp fog and cool temperatures, briefly delaying the relay as Sam Gray of Webster manufactured a pair of earmuffs out of a spare pair of shorts scrounged from the back of his vehicle and stuffed under his bike helmet.

It wasn’t the only McGuyver maneuver of the night.

Michael Morgan from Swannanoa, who is running for U.S. Congress, had signed up as a support volunteer. Upon discovering a spare bike and helmet in the support van, however, Morgan couldn’t resist riding a leg himself. The straps on the bike helmet were too small though, nearly nipping his ambition in the bud. Undaunted, Morgan scrounged the support van’s emergency tool box, and with pocket knife cut a length of yellow rope to fashion under his chin and hold the helmet in place.

“It certainly has that home-grown look,” said Edwin Dennis, an instructor with the Haywood Community College film department, which recorded the event.

It was the second year of the Relay for Clean Air, and Friedman had little trouble recruiting the midnight riders.

“He came through Soul Infusion when we were all drinking and got us to sign up,” said Alan Begley, an electrical contractor in Sylva who was among the Waterrock Knob batallion.

At least one of the riders, Matt Rippetoe, was a little confused over just what he had signed up for that night at Soul Infusion. It wasn’t until a couple of days before the relay when Ripptoe’s buddies asked him if had a headlamp and he realized he was riding at 1 a.m., not 1 p.m.

“I said ‘Why are we going to need a headlamp? What do I need a headlamp for?’” Rippetoe said.

While the Soul Infusion gang apparently had the wherewithal to sign-up for an all downhill leg, the relay wasn’t without long-uphill stretches, too, mainly pulled off by solo powerhouses. Jonathan Bentley, a former Swain County resident, knocked out a 7.2-mile climb from the Oconaluftee Valley up toward Soco Gap above Maggie Valley.

One of the toughest climbs though belonged to Dave Molin, owner of Motion Makers bike shop in Sylva. Peddling through the 3 o’clock hour in the middle of the night, Molin pulled a long haul from lowly Balsam Gap where the Parkway crosses U.S. 23-74, up toward Richland Balsam, the highest point on the Parkway at 6,053 feet. Two miles short of the peak, Molin passed off the pennent to local runners Esther Godfrey and Colin Gaggin.