Bike Blog

ride to work + Critical Mass ride = 29 miles of riding today

I rode downtown to meet up with other bicyclists for the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride, and I got there fairly early. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought that the clothes I had on would be sufficient, but once I got downtown and stood in the wind in Niagara Square for a while, I started getting cold.

So I wish I’d had on at least one more layer of clothes under my outerwear, my wool socks, and my good winter gloves. I rode a few laps around the square to try to keep my own heat-generator going, but to be honest, there were several times while waiting for the ride to start that I thought that it might be better if I went home.

Fourteen bicyclists showed up, which was more than I thought would show. Probably half that group arrived in the last five minutes before the ride started. A lot of them know each other outside the monthly rides, so they see each other and talk about meeting for the ride and know to wait for someone who hasn’t shown up yet.

We started off in the usual way, riding north up Delaware, and then we turned down Chippewa, over to Main, then down to the hockey arena (where there was a big crowd because of a game), then back north again up Washington.

Going down Main, we passed the outdoor skating rink:

I forget where we turned next, but we wound up on Allen, then we went up Elmwood. As we rode along Elmwood, one goofy guy picked up a Christmas tree that had been thrown out on the curb, and he dragged it for a couple miles.

For me the ride ended at the Albright Knox, where most of the group went inside to warm up and look at art. I knew it was going to be a somewhat long ride home for me, longer than any of the other riders I’m sure, so I said see you next month and headed home.

After all that riding, I was pretty thirsty, but when I tried to take a drink of water from my water bottle, it was frozen.

ride distance (including riding downtown, the Critical Mass ride itself, plus my ride home): 24 miles
weather at start of ride:

weather at end of ride: