April 2022 Ride Recap

As part of this blog, I thought it might be nice to upload recaps of each month’s ride. So here’s how the April 29 ride from last week went. All things considered, the planned route worked better than expected! Many people peeled off early but a handful of us completely a full 16 mile route from Embarcadero Plaza to the Greay Walkway in about 3.5 hours.

I handed out flyers of my route from the last post and got a lot of positive feedback. I brought my new rainbow bike party flag to help lead the route.

We rode out around 6:45pm with a group of about 80 people, and… immediately left the planned route. But I expected that to happen. We headed around to the Giants’ Ball Park for the start of their game against the Nationals (spoilers) and immediately got caught up in the crowd of fans and had to shuffle through single-file. We continued through SoMa where we were joined by Deep and his famous “Trikeasaurus” music trike.

With his help we got back on track riding through the car-free parts of Valencia Street and up to Mission Dolores Park. After about a 25 minute break we continued back down through Valencia and up through the Wiggle onto Haight Street. We then took over Fell Street for safe passage along the panhandle and onto the JFK Promenade. After a lap around the concourse we took another break. By now numbers had dwindled down to around 50 and it was dark.

Deep and most of the others headed home, but I was determined to finish the route. I continued on with a group of ten survivors all the way through Golden Gate Park and onto the Great Walkway at Pacheco Street.

If you couldn’t make it to Critical Mass, SF Bike Party is this Friday, May 6th, starting 7:30pm at Mission Dolores Park. Hope to see you there, and next time at Critical Mass!