March Critical Mass

I have tried to take an unflattering picture of Cupcake Smasher, but it just can't be done as far as I can tell. I was glad to see her and all the other beautiful people who turned out for Mass.

I guess I've gotten out of the habit of blogging as much lately. Or riding my bike, that too has suffered in recent months. Gotta get that mojo back, not the blogging, the miles on the bike. Both because I feel much better when I ride 100 miles a week, but also because I have my second RAGBRAI coming up in four months or so.

So anyway, after making every single Critical Mass of 2016 (despite falling out of the habit of riding enough the last six months or so of that year), I missed a couple and finally made it back to the glorious Scumfresh parking lot for March.

Thing about Critical Mass is it's a xerocracy. Which is a less scary sounding word than 'anarchy' especially since most people go scrambling for a Google search to find out what it means so they know how much panic to feel at its utterance. We go where the guy up front goes unless someone decides the guy up front has made a bullshit turn and decides not to follow. This is more functional than you might think.

But since there's no set route, you just never know where you'll end up. Usually we start by going down through the Country Club Plaza. But this time, we actually circled back almost immediately to Scumfresh and went to the Scout. Then to Royal Liquor and then to the West Bottoms. This was perfect for me since I've gotten so out of shape, it was almost the direct route I would take biking home from work until they convinced me to go down to the overlook at the River Market (where Mass used to almost always end but then didn't for a long time). Then a bunch decided to ride to the new Velo Garage in North KC and I skipped out on that and rode with my libertarian friend Eric back towards my house.

I've known Eric since he was an advertiser in the K.C. Jones, the closest thing to Charlie Hebdo Kansas City has ever had, edited by an ultra-right-wing-vegetarian-Jew, the late, great Rich Nadler. Talking politics is normally frustrating and dull, but when you find someone who actually thinks, that's a whole other story even when you disagree. Actually, me and Eric tend to agree on a lot, then disagree for different reasons about other stuff.

All I have to do is quit making these 20 mile Fridays at the end of the month my main riding. I need to get back to the level of conditioning where a 30 or 40 mile day doesn't even leave me sore, and I have about four months to do that in, or the best vacation I've ever taken is going to replay itself as the worst idea ever.