National Bike-to-Work Day in Ann Arbor

Leaving the cabin today - National Bike-to-Work Day - I saw a beautiful vista of mist on Third Sister Lake.  The sun was out, proving to that it would be a nice morning, and the dew on the grass and the light off the trees gave me a lift that coffee couldn't. It was a nice way to start any day, but today it seemed extra nice somehow.

The morning was wonderfully sunny -- not too hot, not too cold -- but when I arrived at the Great Lakes Cycling and Fitness bike shop for our 7:30 departure, I was the only one in a shirt and t-shirt. (But I have a tendency of running warm anyway, so this was not too much of a surprise to me.) The other cyclists wsere riding a mix of bicycle types: a few road-type bikes, some mountain bikes, and a few hybrid city bikes (like me). There were a mix of men and women, as well as a good age range. (If I was forced to guess, I would say that it was about a 30-year age range.) The Ann Arbor roads were quite quiet at that time in the morning, and even Stadium -- all four-and-a-half lanes of road -- didn't have many cars on it. Normally, I ride to town about an hour later, and there is a lot more traffic on the roads. Although it didn't look like there was any central organizer for the group, people did mill about with attentiveness and purpose, talking about their bikes, their realizations about being able to ride into work, the epiphany that one did not need to buy an expensive road bike in order to bike to work, etc. However, I sat down a parking curb and, squinting into the sun, quietly drank some coffee I had brewed up prior to leaving the cabin. Anyway, a set of about a ten riders set out at 7:30 toward the Farmer's Market.

Due to a nice pace (and the small number of lights along Liberty), I wasn't able to take a lot of photos of much of our ride (without being really unsafe in our small "peloton"), but I will remember that -- the Critical Mass ride I went on in October -- it was nice to become a major force on the roads. Ahh, the power that comes from numbers. There was one time that I recall when a car pulled pulled past me (I was riding in the back, doncha know), but -- not realizing how stretched out our group was -- slowed back down to allow us to pass so that the right-turn could be made. I don't know if the driver was angry or puzzled about our actions, but it was still a nice thing to see (having been cut off by car drivers and at least one bus driver). It was also nice when we rode down Main and Huron Streets, the ten of us taking the place of a couple of cars, while not impeding the "flow" of traffic (since traffic along Main Street was already starting to slowly pile up).

As we turned left on Huron Street on to Fourth Ave., and too the Ann Arbor's Farmers' Market, I noticed that (as usual) Fourth Ave. was relatively quiet. This has been something that I have found fascinating: Ann Arbor is (in the downtown area) a grid city that has a lot of traffic flow that becomes constricted along Main Street, and yet the roads parallel to Main see little to no traffic flow. Although this is something that I can explore in a different post (possibly), the nice thing about this (to me) odd traffic-flow was that we pretty much had the road to ourselves, and, now unconstrained by bike lanes or traffic, we spilled out into the road, riding more calmly down the tree-lined road.

The city had some refreshments available at the Farmers' Market, and I tucked into some more coffee, and a bagel (supplied or purchased from Zingerman's). Mmmmmm.... Our group was the first one there, having made the trip from GLCF in about 13 minutes, but as we stuck around and started chatting, more and more people showed up (including my friend Andy Cluley from WEMU), and by the time the Ann Arbor Bike Choir showed up, there were many (many) people under the roof of the Farmers' Market. Mayor Heiftje (another of the city's cyclists) showed up and congratulated everyone for showing up, and told us that the city was committed to expanding cycling opportunities in the city. I personaly wish that the city would put a cycling lane on Liberty Ave. from Stadium to just on the other side of the I-94 bridge as well as sections between the bridge and Wagner, and have more campaigns to let drivers know that they should share the road with cyclists. Anyway, it was almost like a market Saturday in that section of the pavillion, and it was nice to see so many cyclists gathered in one place (and not just because of the food and coffee, which had run out at that point).



However, I did notice several cyclists that either didn't know about the event or didn't feel they wanted to participate. If that latter, then that's fine, but if the former, then in the next year, I think the city (and possibly bike shops, too) should try and publicize the event in more places than they did this year. (I mean, I didn't learn about it until I read about National Bike-to-Work Day online and didn't know about the group-ride until I went in to GLCF. All I'm saying is that there are likely others who didn't even here about it at all.)