Winter solstice ride

Bike Denver just announced its Winter Solstice Ride!



I have a bit of a history with this ride.

Rather, I would have a bit of a history had I ever actually gotten to participate in it.

Two years ago

2008 was my first attempt at doing the solstice ride. It was spectacularly cold. The average number of degrees during that day was 13. And then, after that, the sun went down.

I put on four or five shirts, two or three pairs of pants, numerous other accessories, and struck out into the cold. It was about six miles from where I was living in the Highlands to City Park, from where the ride was leaving, and it took me about thirty minutes to cover the distance.

On the way, the laces of my boot got sucked into my cranks and almost threw me off my bike. I executed an emergency stop in the middle of 15th Street, numbed my hands after removing my gloves in order to gain the dexterity needed to untangle myself, and then continued on my way. After, that is, tucking those laces oh so carefully down into the collar of my boot.

I got to the park and to the fountain, where the ride was supposed to begin, only to find ... nothing. I couldn't see any person in any direction. I circled around the park thinking maybe they meant the statue instead of the fountain.

Along the way, I bumped into another cyclist who had also showed up for the ride only to find a lack thereof. He had just moved to Denver from somewhere in Alaska, and seemed comfortable in the cold.

We puttered around the park for a short while longer, and then parted ways, and I returned home, having never spotted the peloton.

Last year

We had moved across town by the time 2009's winter solstice came around. I was mere blocks from City Park instead of miles from it. And it was much warmer. The average temperature that day was 44 degrees! That's 31 more degrees!

I arrived at the fountain in plenty of time. The crowd was still gathering after I got there, so I mingled and gawked and chatted up some other riders. We all climbed up on the edge of the fountain and had our picture taken, shortly after which we started to roll out.

It was at this time I noticed my rear tire was flat. All the way, rim-on-the-ground flat. I considered patching the tube and then playing catch-up, meeting up with the group at some later point in the ride, but there weren't any scheduled stops and I realized I wasn't interested in rolling around Denver by myself searching for a couple dozen people on bikes.

I watched the last of the group roll off, and I pushed my bike home.

This year

This year, my work schedule conflicts with the ride. I was about to resign myself to the fact that I just wasn't going to go and that it was going to be yet another year of not participating, when my Partner and Co-Pilot pointed out to me that my thing is trying and then failing to go on the ride. Not failing to go for a lack of showing up.

And she's right. So if I'm going to fail yet again to go on the winter solstice ride, it will only be after making a valid effort to succeed.

I'm going to arrange to get off early. I'm going to execute a thorough pre-ride checklist to avoid flats and whatevers. And I am going to go on the damn solstice ride this year.

I want you to imagine I said that last part out loud and that I said it with all the determination that Darnielle does in This Year.

Fleet Buildin'

Pirating, and bicycling alike, are often solitary endeavors. It can get lonely out there on the high, paved seas.

The aim of this project is to Build Comradeship.

There are two ways to do this.

1. Advocate for and participate in group rides.
2. Provide propaganda: cards, notes, fliers, and signs to distribute when you're out flying solo.

1. Group rides

Recurring

Get out there and meet your like-minded neighbors.

Denver Cruisers: Every Wednesday, Early May through late September, 6:00 PM, at Casselman's.

Sunday Slow Ride: Every Sunday afternoon starting at 2 PM. Ride starts at the Great Divide Tap Room.

Critical Mass: Last Friday, March through October, 6:00 PM, seal pool in Civic Center Park, Colfax & Broadway.

Annual Events (in Denver)

• Tour de Fat


• Moonlight Classic


• Urban Assault


• Naked Bike Ride


• Tenn-Low Turismo

2. Propaganda

... will be made available here.

I once met a fella who had a big, gorgeous Fat Tire cruiser. On his handlebars was a little, finely crafted, cardboard tag, hung with thick twine. The label read, "I (heart) Your Bike."

He said he just found it on his bike one day. Somebody had just tagged him.

I want to see more stuff like that.

IN THE SPIRIT OF

Excessive Awesomeness Tickets

Yourbikeishot.com

Flickr/spokecards

IN THE FORM OF

3x5 note cards for standardization's sake and for maximum compatibility with hPDA and DIYPlanner

Tribes

My ladyfriend made the following comment to me the other day as I was gushing about how much fun it was to ride in the Tour de Fat:

I bet it's like running. Usually you run by yourself, or with a buddy or two. But then when you run in a race with hundreds of people, it's all electric and charged, and you're full of adrenaline and having lots of fun.

Which is pretty much exactly what riding in a large group is like.

Good analogy, lady.

And another reason I really liked it is the concept of tribes, which is something I started thinking about when I read this great article in some magazine.

I can't remember the name of either the article or the magazine, but it was by Dave Anderson, and the main concept of it was "the bicycle of the totem of my tribe."

Which is an awesome way to think of yourself and your social group, whatever it may be. What is the totem of your tribe?

With cycling, there is not one unified tribe. There are tons of them.

And they're not all discreet. You can belong to several, to many of them at the same time.

There's the Tribe of Always Wear A Helmet, and the Tribe of Occasionally Wear A Helmet If You Feel Like It, If Ever.

There's the Fixie Tribe. There is the Single Speed Tribe and there are the 3-, 10-, and 21-Speed Tribes.

The Mountain Bike Tribe and the Roadie Tribe.

There's the Commuter Tribe and the Utility Bike Tribe.

And you can get really particular if you want to recognize the Platform Pedal, the Toe Clip, and the Clipless Pedal Tribes.

There is the Lycra Tribe and the Tweed Tribe and the Whatever You Roll Outta Bed In Tribe.

There are Pirate and Ninja tribes.

There's the Tricycle Tribe, the Tall Bike Tribe, the Tandem Tribe, the Recumbent Tribe. The Penny-farthing Tribe.

And you can belong to so many of these tribes. By recognizing your preferences and behaviors; and being aware of all these tribes, and by rejecting the very existence of some of them, and by inventing new ones; you can create for yourself a near endlessly customizable -- and thereby almost guaranteed to be unique -- identity as a cyclist.

And so what I mean to say is that I enjoyed the Tour de Fat because I saw cyclists of every tribe imaginable gathered together for some fun and games.

It was a gathering of all the tribes of the Nation.

Tour de Fat photo-dump

I scoured twitter for photos of the Tour de Fat. And here those photos are!

I didn't take any of these photos. They're all from random twitterers, and from this dude.


This costume was pretty typical of the ones I saw. There were a couple neat hoop skirts made from bike tires. That was neat and resourceful!












During the ride, there was a pretty blond on a street corner, holding a bottle of Bud Light, jumping on a pogo stick, and whooooo-ing at the passing cyclists. I laughed and waved made a comment akin to, "Well, there's some alternative transportation I haven't considered!"

This picture's pretty blurry, but I don't think it's the same lady.




This dude was part of the festival and I'm glad someone got a picture of him. His rig played music and blew bubbles. You can't see the detail very well, but on the front is a little mechanical monkey who also pedaled, motivated by the banana dangling in front of him.
Giant Connect 4! Why wouldn't you build a giant Connect 4?





Slow bike race. The winner got a pretty championship belt.
This is from where the ride took us through downtown. I'm sad I wasn't able to find a picture of us riding past the protesters and the demonstrators. Near here, we rode between two towers, and it echoed a lot if you shouted or rang your bell, which everybody did.
Street sweeper bike! Another one I'm glad somebody got a good shot of him.



Tall tandem! That's quite a special bike. These riders unquestionably have style, but I think were I to ride a tall bike, I'd probably have on a helmet. Maybe pads, too. That's just a long way to fall.

And a tall tandem! That's trust, folks. Cause if you don't work together, you're both going down. Way down.



That's all I got.

There are tons of other photos over on flickr, but unlike these twit pics, they're all in one place so I'm not going bother gathering any of them and posting them.

Tour de Fat

Just finished riding in the Tour de Fat. It was awesome!

I got confused initially and thought that the ride started at 9:00 AM instead of 10:00 AM so I got there at around 8:00 AM to register, and I was WAY TOO EARLY. So I turned around, went back to Einstein Bros and got a bagel for my girlfriend, who was still in bed, and went back home.

I was a bit nervous initially because it was spitting rain, and I could hear very distant thunder, but it ended up not raining. It was just cool and cloudy during the ride.




Tour de Fat highlights!

• Large group ride! Riding your bike is often such a solitary act. It's really neat to be a part of large group rides like this, or like Critical Mass, and meet and see other people on their bikes and chat 'em up.


• Tall bikes. There were a lot of tall bikes! Most of the Ride Wardens (or whatever they were called) were on tall bikes, presumably so they could both easily survey the crowd and be easily seen. There was one tall tandem bike, which was pretty wicked cool. And there was one MEGA tall bike. This was no two-frames-welded-together bike. It was a custom built job, and it was at least a fully story tall.


• Other bikes. There were tons of gnarly cruisers, and other bikes. I was ogling them all. Hard.


• Riding past the Health Care demonstration at the state capitol! People were hooting and hollering! Both in favor of reform, and against Obama. (I don't think many of them were anti-reform, as much as they were anti-Obama.) I yelled back at them as I rode by, "Health! Care! Now!" and I heard some protester comment, in a derogatory fashion, in reference to all of us on two wheels, " ... They look like Obama people."


• Stopped at a red light, some guy looked out his window and saw hundreds of bikes filling the road outside his basement window, and hollered out through the screen, "What are you doing?" I answered, "We're riding bikes."


• Costumes! Both bikes and riders were all dressed up. There plenty of girls in tights and tutus and butterfly wings. What is that costume supposed to be? A slutty butterfly ballerina? There were also a couple folks dressed up like Waldo. Each time I saw one, it was fun to point and yell out, "THERE HE IS!"