Bike events, when it rains it pours!

FINALLY! We've been needing this rain for so long. Though it makes riding a little slipperier in the meantime, the trails around here have been begging for this kind of a downpour for a LONG time now.

Bike life has been awesome lately. Thursday night was the Urban Social Ride, which should have been re-named the Shoal Creek Sidewalk Tour this time around. Though I like riding the trails, I HATE riding sidewalks when there's a perfectly rideable street right next to it. When you surround yourself with 40 other riders all trying to navigate the same busted sidewalk it gets really slow and REALLY lame. After a bit of sidewalk torture we took a break in the park for some brews and a little downtime. When we got rolling again about two dozen of us split from the crew and took to the streets when they hopped back on the sidewalk/trail, which turned out to be right before they hit the really rough off-road stretch. We all met back up at the Draught House shortly after and partook of their Thursday deals.

While the main group chilled hard at the Draught House, a small group of us (several of whom didn't have IDs) split to pick up beer and then ride over to the Central Park tree to hang out. Rumor has it that some people went on to sneak into a pool or something after that, but I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations...

Friday was another day of bike goodness. I hit up a couple spots on the Bike to Work Breakfast list, and got to enjoy a muffin, banana, coffee, luna bar, and some really tasty ham and cheese croissant things that a local culinary school were serving up. Holy crap that was a tasty free breakfast. I didn't make it down for the free Chipotle, but I more than made up for it with the crowning event of the evening, Logan's 21st Birthday Minibike Pub Crawl. That shit got rowdy! All told there were about a dozen minibikes, a chopper bike, a tall bike, a TANDEM minibike (AWESOME), and some cat in a spiderman outfit who none of us had met before but who ended up being one of the coolest cats on the ride. How he rode that 10" wheeled Spidey bike so far I'll never know. All in all we hit Rio Rita, The Good Knight, Lustre Pearl (lame bar but they had FREE Hoboken Pie pizza), Tiniest Bar in Texas, and then up into West Campus for a keg at 2am. Between stops we did plenty of stupid shit on minibikes, and found out first-hand that the the cops DO NOT CARE if you bomb down a crowded 6th St at midnight past the barricades, as long as your wheels are under 20" and you're dressed in a funny outfit. I'm not kidding, we were swerving around THEM and they didn't even bat an eye. That shit was so much fun!

And now today we have the rain. I don't know if the BBQ or Taco Ride happened, or if the rest of today's events are going on as planned, but keep an eye out your window for up-to-the-minute weather updates (it's what I do) and if you're not afraid of a little water, GO RIDE YOUR BIKE!

P.S. All pictures in the above account of insanity were taken by Dougmc. Check out the full gallery here.