Bike Blog

It was raining, but 20 or so riders showed up for this month’s Critical Mass ride. When I got there, there were three other people, 2 of which had helmets on. I commented to another rider that it was the highest percentage of riders with helmets (75%) I’d ever observed. And almost as soon as I said that, 15 people showed up with no helmets.

So I don’t get not wearing helmets. I’ve gone on and on about this in the past. I’ve only fallen once in 13 years or so, but still. You never know.

It was an interesting route we took tonight. A few people kept asking before we left “where are we going tonight”–which was odd because there’s never really a planned route. Once or twice there was a planned destination, but the route to that destination was not followed (I’m thinking of the Central Terminal ride last summer). I also think it was a bunch of people who don’t ride often. Maybe they do and I just don’t remember them, but they didn’t seem like regulars to me. So the more the merrier, I say.

Whenever anyone asked me where we were going, I just pointed in a vague easterly direction and said “that way” because I like when we just ramble along and don’t have a route.

We ended up going somewhat East and South, through the old First Ward of South Buffalo. We’d been down that way once or twice before, but not on these exact streets. We just wandered in and out of neighborhoods. A lot of these neighborhoods are falling apart, from the looks of them. One of my fellow riders asked what these houses sell for, and I answered I didn’t want to think about it. Seriously. On the one hand, a house has tremendous value, on the other hand, having your turn-of-the-last-century house, built in the vernacular style of the time, snuggled in between vacant houses, abandoned warehouses, and cut off from other neighbhorhoods by the highways that were built through the area, the selling price of your house can’t be very great.

While riding down one of these quiet residential streets, someone stopped on the sidewalk and asked if anyone had any tools. Of course I have tools (this morning I had to use them to repair a broken chain link). I pulled over to help, but he needed more tools that I had. I think he also needed a locking ring for his rear cassette, because it looked like his had broken and fallen off. As a result, his rear gears were just sliding back and forth on the rear axle, and sometimes they would disengage from the axle, and he would just spin. Not the best way to ride a few miles home.


Well that repair stop caused the mass to break up somewhat. Some people didn’t realize a small group of us had stopped, because they had turned a corner and couldn’t see us. When we figured out that this broken bike couldn’t be fixed, we started up again, but we didn’t find the rest of the group right away.

A few minutes later, we met up with what seemed like the rest of the group, but then right away it seemed like the group was splitting up again. Some people went up to the South Park railroad bridge to look at the huge rainbow that had formed when the rain stopped, and I stopped to take pictures of the rainbow and the incredible sunset.

And then my wife called, and I went home to take care of her and the boys because she wasn’t feeling well and needed me to pick up a prescription for her.

My part of the ride and the ride home was about 10 miles.

weather data from wunderground.com
temperature	dewpoint	humidity	pressure	visibility	wind	wind gusts	precip.	sky
51.8 °F / 11.0 °C	50.0 °F / 10.0 °C	94%	29.86 in / 1011.1 hPa	1.8 miles / 2.8 kilometers	South 9.2 mph / 14.8 km/h	N/A	0.02 in / 0.1 cm Rain	Light Rain