Riding a Bike and Meeting People
So, yesterday I took part on a "bicicleteada". Not really sure how to translate that into English; it's where you get together with a bunch of people on bikes and go ride around the city all together.
Anyway, this particular group is "BiciUrbanos", a group that is dedicated to promoting the use of bikes in our city. They are the first to nag the government for infrastructure for bicycles in the city (which the city almost completely lacks so far) and they get together for bicicleteadas a couple of times a month. I'd been meaning to take part in them before, but it would have been horrible with my single-speed and my lack of stamina on it.
It was an awful lot of fun. The bicicleteada took part around noon, so there was quite a lot of traffic, but since we were fifty or so, our numbers meant that we could bully the cars to let us pass instead of the other way around. We took up a whole lane of every street we rode in. We rode for an hour or so, and it was great to be able to chat to the people pedalling alongside you, complaining about the potholes, bragging about our bikes and ribbing those who had forgotten their gloves (it was quite nippy).
I wish I had taken my camera with me, because there were a lot of very interesting bikes there. There was a two-person quadracycle, two tricycles, some bikes that were so battered you had to wonder how they still went, an antique bike in excellent state of conservation (it had mostly all original parts, and it was still shiny!) and a couple of bikes that looked like they were made by NASA. The people who rode them were often quite as interesting as the bikes themselves. There were a few newcomers, like me, a couple of which were riding in borrowed bikes the group owns ("recicletas", they call them, as they are bikes recycled and/or restored from donations), a couple of kids, and some hard-core bike commuters who had even sold their cars and even used their bikes for long-distance trips.
After the bibicleteada, we had a picnic and watched some dude paint a mural (there was a reason for this, but I didn't really pay a lot of attention when they were explaining it. XD). I got to talk to a bunch of people, and hopefully planted the seeds for a couple new friendships.
There will be another bibicleteada on the thirtieth, so I'll probably go to that one, too. I'll bring my camera with me next time, so you guys can enjoy watching the weird and interesting bikes, too. :)
Anyway, this particular group is "BiciUrbanos", a group that is dedicated to promoting the use of bikes in our city. They are the first to nag the government for infrastructure for bicycles in the city (which the city almost completely lacks so far) and they get together for bicicleteadas a couple of times a month. I'd been meaning to take part in them before, but it would have been horrible with my single-speed and my lack of stamina on it.
It was an awful lot of fun. The bicicleteada took part around noon, so there was quite a lot of traffic, but since we were fifty or so, our numbers meant that we could bully the cars to let us pass instead of the other way around. We took up a whole lane of every street we rode in. We rode for an hour or so, and it was great to be able to chat to the people pedalling alongside you, complaining about the potholes, bragging about our bikes and ribbing those who had forgotten their gloves (it was quite nippy).
I wish I had taken my camera with me, because there were a lot of very interesting bikes there. There was a two-person quadracycle, two tricycles, some bikes that were so battered you had to wonder how they still went, an antique bike in excellent state of conservation (it had mostly all original parts, and it was still shiny!) and a couple of bikes that looked like they were made by NASA. The people who rode them were often quite as interesting as the bikes themselves. There were a few newcomers, like me, a couple of which were riding in borrowed bikes the group owns ("recicletas", they call them, as they are bikes recycled and/or restored from donations), a couple of kids, and some hard-core bike commuters who had even sold their cars and even used their bikes for long-distance trips.
After the bibicleteada, we had a picnic and watched some dude paint a mural (there was a reason for this, but I didn't really pay a lot of attention when they were explaining it. XD). I got to talk to a bunch of people, and hopefully planted the seeds for a couple new friendships.
There will be another bibicleteada on the thirtieth, so I'll probably go to that one, too. I'll bring my camera with me next time, so you guys can enjoy watching the weird and interesting bikes, too. :)