At some point when I wasn’t looking, riding bicycles went beyond a stiff-nosed vaguely political and eco-conscious activity and became a phenomenon. Austin has a fairly sophisticated community of social bikers that use facebook groups and blog announcements to organize riding events of varying degrees of difficulty, weirdness, and social acceptability. Last night I went on the Thursday night ride for the first time.
There were about four-hundred people who showed up to bike, which was about average I was told. The ride took most of the evening, from 8pm until nearly midnight. Of course there were plenty of stops.
It will be no surprise that many of these stops involved beer.
I wish that I had my ground-effects LED lighting system working. That would have made me a king among dorks. And I should have brought my complete bike repair set. With four-hundred civilians all biking together, you’re guaranteed a novel equipment failure every few blocks. There was a guy who had his crank fall off, and although I own the ideal tool for fixing that, I don’t typically carry it with me.
But it was an easy ride in general. I’ve been on the "Heavy Metal" fitness ride a couple of times, and that’s typically twenty or so miles in an hour and a half, over the biggest hills in the Austin area. I’ve never taken any pictures of that ride for the blog because I didn’t want to bring along extra weight. And yes, I realize that my camera is particularly small. It’s just that kind of ride.
The Thursday night ride was a breeze in comparison. Anybody who was a bike that still rolls could keep up with the pack.
As an unrepentant bike radical who thinks that more people riding bikes will make America a better place, it warms my heart to see bikes capture the high ground of fashion.
