That was more than I expected.
Jun. 15th, 2014 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrWent on another of the naked bike rides today. And before you ask, no those aren't the only rides I'm interested in.
I'll note that when I first checked the Pedalpalooza calendar back in May, the only naked rides were the WNBR last Satuday, and a Sunny Nekkid ride on the 26th.
When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fayanora mentioned the Ginger ride in chat after I got home from the WNBR, I noticed that she was referring to a Facebook post. I went to the calendar and sent her the link, including more info than she had. I started looking through it for more events she might be interested in.
Imagine my surprise to discover there'd been four other naked rides last Saturday. And a "super-ride" where folks would ride in all 5 and follow the same route in between so as to get a 100 km ride.
Plus other naked rides omn other days that hadn't been there earlier.
One was Thursday evening, but I was fighting a cold and it was supposed to rain, so I skipped it. It was the Full Moon Nekkid. :-)
At today's ride, I planned to show up 30 min early, based on the turnout from previous years (50+ riders at a guess)
I got there 20 min early and discovered there was nobody there.
Ok, it was overcast and the weather forecast said there was a chance of showers. But it wasn't all that cold.
I was worried I'd gotten the location or time wrong, even though I'd checked it several times. But a few other people trickled in. By 3 (the official start time) we had 5 or 6 people. By quarter after we'd collected a few more. We finally had 11 people. Three of whom were "ride leaders". They said that if there'd been less than ten, they'd probably have canceled the ride.
One of them gave us a talk explaining the legalities of riding naked. While Portland has an ordinance that makes exposed genial illegal, state law pretty much amounts to "if you aren't aroused, trying to arouse yourself or trying to arouse others, it's legal".
And there are several court cases that have established that if it's "protest" that trumps the city ordinance.
Signs were passed around and we had fun trying to get them fastened to our bikes. Mostly it was protesting oil dependence and the like. I had top use liberal amounts of duct tape.
Due to be such a small ride, we worked on what to say if we ran into police or inquisitive people (if we ran into upset people, we'd move on fast). And, (of course) if a cop asked us to get dressed, we'd do so. The few folks arrested for public nudity in Portland in the last 5-10 years all refused to do so. Funny thing. In the end *all* of them had the charges dropped.
Anyway, because of the small size of the ride, we were going to have to stay close together. Safety in numbers and all that. Also, if anybody had any trouble we'd all slow or stop to wait for them. We didn't want anybody stranded out alone or something.
We did have to do that several times. One guy had a flat (He'd managed to pick up this *huge* roofing nail in his rear tire. Another was a teen on a BMX bike whose brakes weren't working well. He'd thought he could just use his tennis shoes to stop but he quickly realized that they wouldn't last the ride.
I was responsible for a few of the stops in the last third of the ride as we had to regain a couple of hundred feet, and I'm not good on hills.
But I did finish the ride. My GPS said it was 15-16 miles. Somebody else's bike computer said it was 18. But neither of us had zeroed our counters at the start of the ride.
We ended at the same place we started (Coe Circle, a traffic circle at Cesar Chavez and Glisan in NE Portland). The assembly point was near the huge statue of Joan of Arc on a horse in the center.
The ride ended at 6 pm. I didn't get home until a bit after 7. And I had Fay help me get the bike up the stairs. Total distance according to GPS? 22 miles. Oy.
I'd had a Glucerna bar at the end of the ride (and some half strength Gatorade a few times during the ride. Buit given how wiped I was, I grabbed a can of diet tonic water (the quinine helps prevent muscle cramps) had a bit of a snack and crashed out for 4 hrs.
I'd thought about the Gender Bender ride at 9 pm, but after the 22 miles I'd put in, that wasn't gonna happen anyway.
There's a bar crawl ride in the neighborhood, I might try, except it's during the time Fay and I usually spend together in my apartment. There's a Doctor Who ride she may want to go on Wed. Friday (another standing "get together" for us) has a FSM Pirate ride. Yup, Flying Spaghetti Monster and Pirate.
There are two more Sunny Nekkid rides, the Ginger ride, and a couple others we may check out.
I'll note that when I first checked the Pedalpalooza calendar back in May, the only naked rides were the WNBR last Satuday, and a Sunny Nekkid ride on the 26th.
When
fayanora mentioned the Ginger ride in chat after I got home from the WNBR, I noticed that she was referring to a Facebook post. I went to the calendar and sent her the link, including more info than she had. I started looking through it for more events she might be interested in.Imagine my surprise to discover there'd been four other naked rides last Saturday. And a "super-ride" where folks would ride in all 5 and follow the same route in between so as to get a 100 km ride.
Plus other naked rides omn other days that hadn't been there earlier.
One was Thursday evening, but I was fighting a cold and it was supposed to rain, so I skipped it. It was the Full Moon Nekkid. :-)
At today's ride, I planned to show up 30 min early, based on the turnout from previous years (50+ riders at a guess)
I got there 20 min early and discovered there was nobody there.
Ok, it was overcast and the weather forecast said there was a chance of showers. But it wasn't all that cold.
I was worried I'd gotten the location or time wrong, even though I'd checked it several times. But a few other people trickled in. By 3 (the official start time) we had 5 or 6 people. By quarter after we'd collected a few more. We finally had 11 people. Three of whom were "ride leaders". They said that if there'd been less than ten, they'd probably have canceled the ride.
One of them gave us a talk explaining the legalities of riding naked. While Portland has an ordinance that makes exposed genial illegal, state law pretty much amounts to "if you aren't aroused, trying to arouse yourself or trying to arouse others, it's legal".
And there are several court cases that have established that if it's "protest" that trumps the city ordinance.
Signs were passed around and we had fun trying to get them fastened to our bikes. Mostly it was protesting oil dependence and the like. I had top use liberal amounts of duct tape.
Due to be such a small ride, we worked on what to say if we ran into police or inquisitive people (if we ran into upset people, we'd move on fast). And, (of course) if a cop asked us to get dressed, we'd do so. The few folks arrested for public nudity in Portland in the last 5-10 years all refused to do so. Funny thing. In the end *all* of them had the charges dropped.
Anyway, because of the small size of the ride, we were going to have to stay close together. Safety in numbers and all that. Also, if anybody had any trouble we'd all slow or stop to wait for them. We didn't want anybody stranded out alone or something.
We did have to do that several times. One guy had a flat (He'd managed to pick up this *huge* roofing nail in his rear tire. Another was a teen on a BMX bike whose brakes weren't working well. He'd thought he could just use his tennis shoes to stop but he quickly realized that they wouldn't last the ride.
I was responsible for a few of the stops in the last third of the ride as we had to regain a couple of hundred feet, and I'm not good on hills.
But I did finish the ride. My GPS said it was 15-16 miles. Somebody else's bike computer said it was 18. But neither of us had zeroed our counters at the start of the ride.
We ended at the same place we started (Coe Circle, a traffic circle at Cesar Chavez and Glisan in NE Portland). The assembly point was near the huge statue of Joan of Arc on a horse in the center.
The ride ended at 6 pm. I didn't get home until a bit after 7. And I had Fay help me get the bike up the stairs. Total distance according to GPS? 22 miles. Oy.
I'd had a Glucerna bar at the end of the ride (and some half strength Gatorade a few times during the ride. Buit given how wiped I was, I grabbed a can of diet tonic water (the quinine helps prevent muscle cramps) had a bit of a snack and crashed out for 4 hrs.
I'd thought about the Gender Bender ride at 9 pm, but after the 22 miles I'd put in, that wasn't gonna happen anyway.
There's a bar crawl ride in the neighborhood, I might try, except it's during the time Fay and I usually spend together in my apartment. There's a Doctor Who ride she may want to go on Wed. Friday (another standing "get together" for us) has a FSM Pirate ride. Yup, Flying Spaghetti Monster and Pirate.
There are two more Sunny Nekkid rides, the Ginger ride, and a couple others we may check out.
