First Flock and encounters ensue

Friday was the first chance I had to ride with Flock of Cycles and with the wonderful weather, I couldn't pass up the chance. I skipped out of work a bit early and headed to Dippy where about 25 of us embarked on a 10 mile ride through Oakland, Squirrel Hill, East Liberty and Friendship (not necessarily in that order).  I ran into Marko and Yale again and met Joyce, Marcel and Mick for the first time.
A gentleman called Xuth showed up wearing Xuth's Coat of LEDs. It was beyond awesome.


Here's 52 seconds of my perspective riding behind him:



Frankly, video doesn't do it justice.

It was considerable fun, very organized and plan on going again. I didn't even mind the hill or being the last one up. I hung back with Joyce and stayed with her when her chain fell off going up the hill. I think we needed a third arm to point at all the potholes. One pothole was as big as a car.

I really need to make sure my headlamp is properly charged before night riding. It died before I made it back to base. The Strip was eerily quiet when I pedaled back through. I could hear my own breathing and the faint click of the loose spoke reflectors on the front wheel.
I enjoyed the silence.
a lovely 22 mile evening. I kicked my Fitbit steps over 17K. Nice.

Saturday...

Saturday brought even better weather, the sun was out all day and so was the wind. I departed base after lunch with Hubby with intentions of returning Ruby's hospital tag to Thick Bikes. On the Hot Metal Bridge I stopped to check out the flooding at Riverview Park and Marko rolled up while I was snapping a shot. We chatted for a bit and then Terry rode up.

It was nice to finally meet Terry after having read his blog for a while. It turns out Terry was also heading to Thick so we all rode together. It was a crazy day on the South Side with a giant Soup Crawl event of some sort. Everyone was walking around with special Soup Tags and a glazed look of soup satiation in their eyes.

At Thick I returned Ruby's tag to Chris and decided to look at a secondary headlamp but I didn't find any USB rechargeable ones that I liked. I settled on *more* FIKS reflective stickers. My ridemates poked fun of me, telling me that if I put any more reflective stuff on my bike that I'll need *more* bike to do so. There's no such thing as 'too reflective', I told them.

I'm playing with the features of iMovie, here's a portion of Saturday's ride in hyperspeed:




We headed back into town and dropped Terry off at Wingharts, but not before I pointed out some of the new Hades tiles to them. Marko rode with me back to base as he was going to check out the condition of the trail down to the Bastille.

When I caught my trolley car to head back home, I looked down from the T station and there was Vannevar and SR waiting at the light! I manged to snap a shot of them as the car pulled away.

It was a wonderful day of spectacular weather, good company and chance encounters.