Stinky socks & tired legs

I am exhausted, completely pooped. I participated in the Seattle Critical Mass this evening. It’s so different than the Chicago Critical mass. I arrived way before 6pm to find a small group of cyclists looking over their fixed gear bikes, messengers probably. No police were in sight and there were now flyers being handed out.

As for the bikes themselves, I did not really notice any tandems or weird bikes. Most all of the bikes were road bikes or mountain bikes, many of which had gears. Helmets, headlights and tail lights were plentiful. These people don’t mess around, they are hardcore cyclists. I did not see anyone drinking, or at least they were conspicuous about it.

The circle up was small and took place in the Westlake center on the pedestrian pavement, it took awhile for everyone to catch on and there was not much space to ride. But I guess that did matter much, because we were at the most 200 people, small. I wonder how many the Chicago mass on such a cold temperature evening…

Riding through the semi empty downtown streets of Seattle was pleasant. We didn’t have many hooligans swearing at cabbies and flicking them off. We also didn’t have any angry drivers getting out of their vehicles to yell at us. It seemed as though this was a normal occurrence. Some guy did make everyone shout by yelling “f**ing hippies”. It made me laugh. These riders were far from hippies, just laid back cyclists.

This was a nice ride, no stop-and-go riding with beer guzzling in between. We were going up and down hills the entire time, and I fell behind. The reason I fell behind was not because I couldn’t make it UP the hills, it was because I was scared to go flying DOWN them. So many riders passed me coming down, I had my hands on the brakes the entire time, afraid to let go of my death grip.

After about a half hour of riding, we circled in this fountain-like cement structure in the shape of one of those spiral quarter things you see at the museum. This one was filled with bikers with blinking lights spinning around. I went down into it, and then came up again. I thought that critical mass was over, how lame. But I asked someone and he said we were just all massing back up together. We ended up heading towards Volunteer Park. Up, up, up many hills we went. Never have I been so happy to have so many gears in working condition. I was winded by the time we got up to Broadway, but at least I didn’t have to walk my bike up, there was a girl I saw walking her bike up.

The flatness of the last long stretch was relaxing. I stopped riding with the group when they headed toward the U-district. There was no way that I wanted to climb that hill back up by myself on my way home.

I feel great, like I’ve accomplished some kind of bike marathon, not in time, but in elevation. I think the challenges of critical mass here are not the cars, traffic or pedestrians. Nature can be just as cumbersome.