Oh the things we do for love. Familial love in this case. My older brother rarely makes much sense to me, but I am very fond of him. Therefore, when he asked us all for just one thing for his birthday, we wanted to do what we could. However, that one thing proved to be much more complicated than I had expected. What he wanted was for all the family to ride Critical Mass with him.
For those who are not familiar, Critical Mass is a weekly bike ride that has gatherings in cities all around the country. The basic idea is that bike riders should forcefully remind the rest of the population that they too are allowed on the road and deserving of respect. To do this, cyclists will gather in a pre-planned location, and then ride around a very busy area en masse ignoring traffic signals, filling streets, and generally pissing off a lot of people.
Now, I am not the kind of person who willingly takes physical risks for fun. I am also not the kind of person who usually breaks rules. As you can see, going on this ride was more than a little conflicting for me. However, as I mentioned before, it was the only thing Elder Brother wanted, so I felt I had to participate. I swallowed my fear (and some of my moral code) and headed over to his house.
Fortunately I was able to borrow a bike from his extensive collection since mine does not fit in my car. Knowing me as he does, Elder Brother actually chose to lend me an automatic bike. I am not making this up. He actually gave me a 10 (?) speed bike that shifted its own gears. This is lucky because it turns out that paralyzing fear would have made it difficult for me to do this shifting on my own. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
When Elder Brother said he wanted the family to go on this ride, he wasn't kidding. Big Niece, Small Niece, and my sister-in-law were also planning to ride. All but Small Niece were feeling just like I was: conflicted. Small Niece has a disturbing lack of fear and is truly up for anything, so she was running around in her underpants grinning like, well, like herself when she's really thrilled.
Big Niece, on the other hand, was sitting in a chair looking like a rain cloud. When I asked her what was the matter she said that she didn't like the way some people don't wear helmets on these rides ("amen!" I thought), and she doesn't like the way people break the rules on these rides (again "amen!"), and she was worried that her pant leg might get caught in the chain ("oh crap what about my pant leg!" I thought). She seemed quite delighted when I admitted to having some of the same concerns. We then found a soccer sock to pull up over her pant leg, and then she actually brightened up enough that we could all head out.
We ALL put on our helmets (Big Niece would not have allowed us to do otherwise), we pulled up our soccer socks, and we got on our bikes. As we took off we looked like this. First me, trying to shake the cramp out of my hip because my bike was a bit too tall. Then Sister-in-law wobbling along trying to get the hang of her manual gear bike. Next was Elder Brother on the first seat of a tandem bike (and doing all the work). Behind him was Big Niece on the second seat of the tandem (still looking pretty anxious), and finally on the half bike attached to the tandem was Small Niece still smiling like a loony. We were off.
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