For this solo ride, I followed the route that the New England Randonneurs rode on April 20 2015. This was my first attempt at the 300K distance, which I had been working up to through last summer and this summer. Because I rode it from home which added some distance, it was also my first double century (i.e. 200+ miles). I have fond memories of 6 hours of moonlit riding; it is quiet out there in the country. The bike functioned well, and so did my body, and we reached the Hanscom Field finish (and all the intermediate control points) within the official timeframes that would have applied had this been an official brevet. I did have some drama regarding meeting the time cutoff, which was contributed to by the fact that after dark I was riding just by GPS, not using cuesheet or odometer or wristwatch. At Sterling on the return trip, I arrived as a church bell was striking 11pm. As I was filling my water bottles at the wonderful open faucet at the town's green, I calculated that I had no chance of reaching Hanscom in the remaining 3 hours, based on my pace so far. So, I did the necessary psychological gymnastics to let go of the brevet-time goal, and just ride for the sake of riding. I next looked at my watch in the first brightly street-lit section I encountered ( in West Concord) and found it was only 1:06AM. Something had been wrong in my calculations. Given a chance to meet the time target, I had no trouble re-adopting the goal of meeting the time target. I picked up the pace and arrived at Hanscom 30 minutes later, with 19 minutes to spare.Then I loafed my way the final 8 miles home, arriving around 2:40. Recovery was not too bad; I managed to sleep from 4:30am to 11:30am and my hangover the next day was not too bad. It took two nights' sleep before my waking pulse returned to normal. I cannot yet fathom how randonneurs can do rides like this day after day. I do see that doing the 200k and 300k rides makes me stronger (though I'm not happy about those knee pains I feel during the hangover day).