peloton | Garden Variety Life

Family Bike Ride 2012 — photo by C.Fowler

Earth Day is a pretty good excuse to tune up the bike.

For the past couple of years Saanich hosted a Cycling Festival. My favourite part of it is the BIG Family Bike Ride.

With the city on board, the police close off some streets & let the cyclists take over. Mayhem 🙂

In truth it’s not craziness & it’s not a total closure. They call it a ‘rolling closure’.

Cyclists get 1 or 2 full lanes, just for the length of time it takes us to get through each section of town. It feels pretty good.

It’s kinda like when the Queen comes to town. There are Police Motorcycles up front…
and just behind that is her cavalcade (only this time it’s US)…
and then it’s wrapped up with more Police & Emergency Vehicles at the very back.

Oh yeah, and we can’t forget the hoards of cheering fans. No seriously, there were folks cheering from the side-walks & everything! Not a lot.

Okay: SOME PEOPLE were on the side-walks.

They were cheering.

I liked it.

I also really liked cycling down the Shelbourne & McKenzie thoroughfares without worrying about being side-swiped by that motorist who doesn’t realize his passenger-side-mirror really does stick out further than he thinks it does….

Since I’ve been an active commuter cyclist for a couple of decades, I figure I have nerves of steel. So it was interesting for me to notice I revelled in the feeling of safety.

I’d though cycling in a big group might have some tension of its own. Like in a peloton… Local boy Ryder Hesjedal, has REAL nerves of steel – – enough for cycling in one of those crazy-close-packs of racing cyclists …. have you ever seen one of those crashes?

Well, I didn’t see anything like that on the Family Bike Ride. It was pretty laid back.

The choice & variety of bikes was incredible. Road bikes, mountain bikes, recumbents….
Bicycles with baby seats… with trailers…
Bicycles built for two… or more….
I even saw a little kid with a wooden bike. How cool is that?