CM reportback
wow…what an awesome ride
i arrived at the art gallery downtown at about 5:45, and most people were also just arriving at that time. i had my unicycle with me, and had just about everybody ask me about it ;) Lots of my friends were present, so i chatted a few people up while we waited for the ride to start.
there was one other unicyclist too: a guy with the super-big Coker wheel (with a 36 inch diameter). The bigger the wheel is, the more ground you cover on every pedal revolution, so he found it much easier to keep up with the cyclists. i ended up getting left behind as the ride went over the granville bridge. On the downhill portion on the far side, everyone on bikes whizzed past me and went down 4th ave towards burrard. i ended up having to get off the unicycle and run down the street to try to catch up. I got some great exercise, but didn’t actually catch them.
i then rode over the burrard bridge back to downtown, and then went uphill to Davie street. Luckily, the mass had meandered around a few streets down there, and happened to have turned back onto Davie and met up with me about 30 seconds after i got to davie and burrard.
at some point in there, i met someone who recognized me from this blog (hi Rob!), which was a little weird. “Are you anarchocyclist?” he asked as i pedalled down the street. i still find it quite neat when people i don’t know are reading the blog. :)
at the end, we rode past GM Place and waved and hollered at the people lined up for the U2 concert, and then a couple of us buggered off to go find some ethiopian food and a beer. in total, i think there were at least 150 people at the start…maybe more. I didn’t do a completely accurate count, but i think it’s close. adding up the 2 bridges, davie+denman+robson+past GM place, etc, i think we might have ridden almost 10 km. It was a little tiring for me because of the running i had to do, but most of it was great fun. I’d definitely consider doing it on the unicycle again :)
Ride hard, ride free