Cyclists can be an awfully self-serious bunch. I say this as someone who has called himself a “serious” cyclist … without irony. It’s the sort of statement to which I think the proper response is side-eye if we’re being generous and eye-rolling if we need to keep from gagging. Either way, the eyes have it.
Here in my home of Santa Rosa a group of riders have been getting together for a group ride on Tuesday nights for several years now. This is no MAMIL-populated peloton, thank Buddha. These are people who just happen to like bikes and like to socialize. Sometimes, things don’t have to be complicated.
I learned of the group via the Book of Faces, but never made it out until earlier this year when my girlfriend, Jennifer, and I took my boys to the ride one March evening. However, because it was March, those springtime temperatures cratered mid-way through the ride and we had to head home before making it to the ride’s namesake stop.
The rider above is Don, a buddy of mine from my mountain bike club. He has two sons a bit older than mine who he is trying to coax to the ride. We’ve agreed to work together to get our boys out there more.
The ride “meets” at 5:30 pm near the center of town, but it doesn’t roll until just after 6:00 pm. We head out through a neighborhood called “The JC” because of its proximity to the town’s junior college. We toodle through residential streets, weaving our way into the town’s historic district (a home used in the Alfred Hitchcock film “Shadow of a Doubt” is on our route), before winding into downtown for a regroup at Court Square in the center of town.
Speed is antithetical to this ride, as is aero equipment. Low-riders, cruisers, PK Rippers, ancient mountain bikes, current e-bikes—there isn’t a kind of bike that is unwelcome. I even saw one guy on a carbon road bike with his number pinned on from the local Tuesday Night Twilights race series. If I could have gotten close enough to him as we rolled, I’d have loved to ask him about his experience. Inside of an hour he went from target market to outlier and he never changed clothes or got off his bike.
The ride is big. Today’s was upward of 100 riders, but it was easily double that when I did it in March. Think Critical Mass big, but also think of it as Critical Mass without the anarchic, adversarial attitude for which Critical Mass was always known. Part of the charm of this ride is that it couldn’t be more chill (if it was more chill than it is, then there wouldn’t be any bike riding).
There’s a core group of riders who will occupy intersections as the group passes through. And unlike most road group rides I’ve done, with Taco Tuesday, no one gets to a yellow light and dashes through with another 30 people on their wheel, praying that the cars don’t pull out yet. The traffic volunteers are relaxed enough to make the Big Lebowski seem like he needs to take it down a notch. They wave and smile and … I never hear any cars honking.
So who makes up the ride? Everyone. That’s the best part of this ride, of course, the people. It’s single guys on tall bikes or 26-in.-wheel cruisers. It’s parents with kids in trailers or on child seats, sometimes on their own bikes. I’d venture to say that the straight, white dude population is outnumbered by folks who are black, brown, queer, or even Dallas Cowboys fans—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ages ran from single digits to somewhere in the 60s and no one displays anything political.
The focal point of the ride is a spot in Southwest Santa Rosa with half a dozen taco trucks serving legit Mexican food. This is a part of town with a number of Latino-owned businesses and restaurants. Chipotle would get laughed out of here. As I finished my burrito I saw two kids walk by with churros the size of corn cobs. Our stop was long enough for at least some people to down three beers. I stuck to two bottles of real Coke and the aforementioned burrito.
From there we squiggled our way back into downtown and north toward our start, with people peeling off and heading for home in the setting sun. As I headed back, my question was less, “Why haven’t I done this more often?” than “When is the next time I can do this?”
