the hum drum life
"Hey! I know you!" was the way that Greg introduced himself when he pinged me to ask for a ride to the AMC course. We'd known of each other the way one does in a scene. Faces that show up at enough events in common. Friends who include us in the same conversation but don't always introduce us to each other. Voices that appear on shared comment threads in social media. So on one level, he was asking for a ride, on another it was probably this observation of, "it's about goddamn time that we became friends."
Because, yes, we did need to become friends.
A few months ago, on a cool fall evening, I was riding my bike over the river from the South End. I had taken the route through the Musical Locks, towards the path that ran underneath the Zakim, when I heard dance music thundering from below the bridge; and I remembered an event that some of my friends had been mentioning to me: Bike Party
I had been curious about Bike Party after someone described it as "it's like Critical Mass but without the entitled assholes." I liked the idea of a spontaneous parade of cyclists, but did not like the way Critical Mass turned every one of its rides into an exercise of grievance and self-righteousness. And what I found, underneath the Zakim, with cyclists towing trailers with jury rigged soundsystems to create a ten minute flash rave was exactly what I was looking for. I wound up riding with that pack of hundreds for an hour through the streets of Cambridge, weaving through Kendall and Central, blasting music and high fiving pedestrians. If Critical Mass was vinegar, a display of solidarity amongst a disenfranchised class of road users, then Bike Party was honey, an enticement towards every pedestrian who looked at the fun that we were having and saying, "hey, you can be a part of this too. All you need is a bike."
And Greg? Greg was one of the organizers, as well as the mastermind of a little thing called the Midnight Marathon Ride.
We got along well on that first day of climbing together, running through our social Venn diagram of which friends we had in common, realizing that we had an overlap not just amongst cyclists, but within the Burners and makers and hipsters and other cool kids of the Camberville zeitgeist. He explained that he had gotten a ticket to the climbing class as a birthday present from one of his friends, and that he had just recently gotten into climbing but cycling was his first love.
He had just finished a five day bike tour of the Pacific Coast Highway in California the previous year, and I took that as a prompt to swap long distance cycling stories with him, telling him about wandering through New England and France on randonnees. After class, he said, "hey, umm, do you mind hanging out a little longer? Maybe get dinner at the Druid?"
"Yeah, actually, that'd be good. Let me just drop off my stuff and I'll see you in ten?"
silentq had just texted me to see if I wanted dinner, and I convinced her to come along. Somehow that turned into wandering into Union for cocktails at Bronwyn as we all discussed cycling and camping and the plans for the next Midnight Marathon in an age of terrorism.
The thing you have to understand is that for who knows how many years, cyclists have taken advantage of the incipient road closures leading up to the Boston Marathon as an opportunity to cycle the empty streets stretching between Hopkinton and Boston. It's been an unofficial tradition amongst many local clubs to start out in the early morning and make a fast and aggressive ride of it, and try to finish the route before the race officials actually closed the course. Greg's particular contribution was to setup a midnight ride, so that casual cyclists could complete the course at their own leisure, and the midnight start encouraged people to go with lights and costumes and treat it like one big party.
In 2013, the Midnight Maration Ride reached its apex, with Greg and his crew succeeding in getting the MBTA to assign a special bike car to ferry participants straight to Hopkinton for the start. After the bombings, the BAA, the organization behind the Boston Marathon, acceding to security concerns wanted to shut down all unauthorized events surrounding the race and tried to stop the Midnight Marathon. They succeeded in getting the MBTA to suspend its special bike car, and asked Greg to stop the ride this year.
"But, you know," he said to us at dinner, "the fact is that, it's no longer my ride. I was already getting email and tweets from people saying that they were making their own plans and setting up carpools and stuff. I explained to the BAA that I could just say that I won't get involved, but the streets are still public streets. People are still going to ride. Better to have a quote-unquote official event to channel all of the interest rather than deal with a bunch of randoms hitting the streets whenever."
And he was right. I was already planning on doing the ride with mishak before the news of the BAA pressure came out, and even after that I was still planning on saying, "fuck it. Let's do this anyway." The streets are still public streets. So long as the police don't close them, I can ride on them if I want.
In the end, the Midnight Marathon was smaller than last year, despite some logistical heroics from Greg and his volunteers, but it was still blast, still a splendid parade of cyclists riding in the night. I had strapped a bluetooth speaker to the rear rack of my ANT, and so had music playing for the entire way to Boston. mishak and L. seemed to have a great time, despite the fact that mishak got a wheel mishap halfway through, just outside of Wellesley.
Then, after we arrived, I turned around and rode back out to grab the car that I left at the start. And I got to ride on those streets in the quiet that followed. Just me and twenty miles of peace, tranquility and a full moon. I have missed that.
Afterwards, I had taken the footage that I recorded with mishak's GoPro and posted it to Youtube, and watched with some satisfaction as it got its viral blip of fame in Boston bike circles. The following week, at climbing class, I saw Greg again, and we just fist-bumped each other.
"Good video, man."
"Good event."
"We should do this stuff more often."
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure we will."
Because, yes, we did need to become friends.
A few months ago, on a cool fall evening, I was riding my bike over the river from the South End. I had taken the route through the Musical Locks, towards the path that ran underneath the Zakim, when I heard dance music thundering from below the bridge; and I remembered an event that some of my friends had been mentioning to me: Bike Party
I had been curious about Bike Party after someone described it as "it's like Critical Mass but without the entitled assholes." I liked the idea of a spontaneous parade of cyclists, but did not like the way Critical Mass turned every one of its rides into an exercise of grievance and self-righteousness. And what I found, underneath the Zakim, with cyclists towing trailers with jury rigged soundsystems to create a ten minute flash rave was exactly what I was looking for. I wound up riding with that pack of hundreds for an hour through the streets of Cambridge, weaving through Kendall and Central, blasting music and high fiving pedestrians. If Critical Mass was vinegar, a display of solidarity amongst a disenfranchised class of road users, then Bike Party was honey, an enticement towards every pedestrian who looked at the fun that we were having and saying, "hey, you can be a part of this too. All you need is a bike."
And Greg? Greg was one of the organizers, as well as the mastermind of a little thing called the Midnight Marathon Ride.
Click to viewWe got along well on that first day of climbing together, running through our social Venn diagram of which friends we had in common, realizing that we had an overlap not just amongst cyclists, but within the Burners and makers and hipsters and other cool kids of the Camberville zeitgeist. He explained that he had gotten a ticket to the climbing class as a birthday present from one of his friends, and that he had just recently gotten into climbing but cycling was his first love.
He had just finished a five day bike tour of the Pacific Coast Highway in California the previous year, and I took that as a prompt to swap long distance cycling stories with him, telling him about wandering through New England and France on randonnees. After class, he said, "hey, umm, do you mind hanging out a little longer? Maybe get dinner at the Druid?"
"Yeah, actually, that'd be good. Let me just drop off my stuff and I'll see you in ten?"
silentq had just texted me to see if I wanted dinner, and I convinced her to come along. Somehow that turned into wandering into Union for cocktails at Bronwyn as we all discussed cycling and camping and the plans for the next Midnight Marathon in an age of terrorism.
The thing you have to understand is that for who knows how many years, cyclists have taken advantage of the incipient road closures leading up to the Boston Marathon as an opportunity to cycle the empty streets stretching between Hopkinton and Boston. It's been an unofficial tradition amongst many local clubs to start out in the early morning and make a fast and aggressive ride of it, and try to finish the route before the race officials actually closed the course. Greg's particular contribution was to setup a midnight ride, so that casual cyclists could complete the course at their own leisure, and the midnight start encouraged people to go with lights and costumes and treat it like one big party.
In 2013, the Midnight Maration Ride reached its apex, with Greg and his crew succeeding in getting the MBTA to assign a special bike car to ferry participants straight to Hopkinton for the start. After the bombings, the BAA, the organization behind the Boston Marathon, acceding to security concerns wanted to shut down all unauthorized events surrounding the race and tried to stop the Midnight Marathon. They succeeded in getting the MBTA to suspend its special bike car, and asked Greg to stop the ride this year.
"But, you know," he said to us at dinner, "the fact is that, it's no longer my ride. I was already getting email and tweets from people saying that they were making their own plans and setting up carpools and stuff. I explained to the BAA that I could just say that I won't get involved, but the streets are still public streets. People are still going to ride. Better to have a quote-unquote official event to channel all of the interest rather than deal with a bunch of randoms hitting the streets whenever."
And he was right. I was already planning on doing the ride with mishak before the news of the BAA pressure came out, and even after that I was still planning on saying, "fuck it. Let's do this anyway." The streets are still public streets. So long as the police don't close them, I can ride on them if I want.
In the end, the Midnight Marathon was smaller than last year, despite some logistical heroics from Greg and his volunteers, but it was still blast, still a splendid parade of cyclists riding in the night. I had strapped a bluetooth speaker to the rear rack of my ANT, and so had music playing for the entire way to Boston. mishak and L. seemed to have a great time, despite the fact that mishak got a wheel mishap halfway through, just outside of Wellesley.
Then, after we arrived, I turned around and rode back out to grab the car that I left at the start. And I got to ride on those streets in the quiet that followed. Just me and twenty miles of peace, tranquility and a full moon. I have missed that.
Afterwards, I had taken the footage that I recorded with mishak's GoPro and posted it to Youtube, and watched with some satisfaction as it got its viral blip of fame in Boston bike circles. The following week, at climbing class, I saw Greg again, and we just fist-bumped each other.
"Good video, man."
"Good event."
"We should do this stuff more often."
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure we will."