Reading (For Dummies)

I Like to Ride

I drove out to Rochester on Friday afternoon to check out their Critical Mass ride. I've never been to one before, and had considered going to New York City at some point. I thought I'd see how they were in a smaller city before taking part in the more extreme riding that Manhattan has to offer.

The timing couldn't have been better -- on Thursday I rode a time trial with the Triathlon Club and nearly got killed. Some lady in a nice red Chevrolet was blaring her horn as she was "stuck" behind me (I was cruising 25-30mph in a 30mph zone, admittedly in the middle of the lane, but the shoulder was torn up). I gave her the middle. When she finally did pass me, she opened her door to try and hit me off my bicycle. Yeesh!

I picked up Brent, a guy I had never met before, and left for Rochester. We got to RIT campus without a hitch, met up with 4 other riders there and started heading to the U of R campus. I was a bit afraid that the turnout would be abysmal given how many people started at RIT.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. At the U of R clock tower, I met up with Tobin Fricke, as well as 35 or so other riders and an IndyMedia reporter. We left for our ride, a gargantuan pack of people ready to make the streets safer for bicyclists. Cars beeped at us, we cheered back, fists pumping.

We headed to Rochester's booming downtown (hugely better than Syracuse's downtown), and rode along Main Street, Monroe Ave, and a bunch of the other main arteries of the city. For the most part, drivers were polite. The few bad apples that revved their engines, honked horns, and yelled received some amusing treatment from our pack of riders, who dilly-dallied quite slowly in front of the inconsiderate drivers. On the whole, though, people were good. Police officers waved hello. Flyers were handed out with a short explanation of what we were doing. I cruised along at 20mph or so and shoved flyers on the windows of moving vehicles. A good time was had by all.

After two hours or so of riding, people were getting tired, cold, and hungry. So we went downtown to a pizza shop. I met up with my cousin Emily and had some tasty Chinese cuisine with her and her friend Kate. We shared all sorts of interesting linguistic exchanges on family, friends, politics, religion. I've missed my cousin a good deal, as much of a burly woodsman I've become to her cosmopolitanesque life in the city.

I have to admit that I had some reservations about heading to Rochester. For some reason it feels like it's Annie's city. The communicational black hole that has been my ex-girlfriend has always been a bit unsettling to me...the idea left me feeling something like Randall Waterhouse's return to his ex's town. This trip has definitely gotten me over that, though, and opened the highway to a nifty area full of hippies and bright ideas.