September Kidical Mass

A ride to Doughbot Doughnuts is the best way to start a weekend, always. A bike ride to Doughbot with 24 other fun folks is even better! 

This was the first ride of our new riding schedule. Sacramento Kidical Mass now has a "board" of involved individuals and we are working on getting a real website up. We now ride each 4th Saturday of the month with varying times and routes. Our goal is to make Sac Kidical Mass a regular part of Sacramento's biking experience. It's hard for families to juggle additional activities already but by ensuring a fun ride each month, we are able to attract more people to the event and families don't have to worry if they can't come because there is always next month's ride. 

A couple of the new "official" Kidical Mass plans are to include a waiver for parents at the start of the ride (which helps collect rider information to count participants, emergency phone number for the ride, and email address to keep them updated for future events. We also had the top 10 guidelines for rider safety and enjoyment. 

1. Make individual decisions and be responsible for your family’s safety.
2. Obey all traffic signals and signs. 
3. Use hand signals. Wave hello to people, too. 
4. Follow right-of-way rules with all users of the roads.  
5. Share the road, avoid the door-zone, use appropriate lane positioning for optimal safety.
6. Ride single-file in bike lanes. 
7. Keep at least a “ghost bike” of space between you and the rider in front. 
8. No one passes the leader. No one gets left behind. 
9. Have fun!
10. Make new friends! 

This is going to be especially helpful for new riders to understand that this is a family-friendly, law-abiding street ride. There will be no corking of intersections or lane blocking (unless necessary for rider safety). 

Our September ride started at Grant Park. It's a great place to hang out while riders assemble. It was pretty awesome to watch the cargo bikes start filling up the park! We had three Yuba Mundos, one homemade bakfiets,  one Workcycle bakfiets, and our Bullitt (that makes three bakfietsen for those counting and using proper Dutch terminology), one Fr8 bike from Workcycles, four kiddos riding their own bikes (!), an adult trike, and three other "regular" bikes. 

Jerrod's Mundo customized with baskets and sun shade (and more).

Workcycle bakfiets with homemade sun shade by Seth.

Melissa's Fr8. She arrived carrying two kids and two bikes on this!

2 Mundos, 2 bakfietsen. Keith built his own from a folding bike! --Photo by Seth Koen

Our ride was about three miles long, mostly down 24th street which had more stop signs but fewer car drivers than the main drag 19th street. We stayed together and followed traffic laws. Big Brother stayed with me as my co-leader. I was so impressed at his riding ability and how quickly he is improving--at each stop, he'd get his "power pedal" ready for a strong push-off! Seth, one of our awesome KM "board" members, played sweeper and kept everyone together. 

At Doughbot, we piled into the shop where we were greeted with an entire tray of doughnut flowers! We made ourselves comfortable and devoured the entire platter. A HUGE thank you to Dannah and Bryan for making delicious doughnuts and coffees AND for allowing us to take over their shop! 

After we had imbibed enough sugar, we all peeled off in different directions. A few of us headed around the corner to Southside Park to let the kids run around. Coincidentally, that was also where the Tweed Riders were gathering but we had other plans and couldn't join this time. It was great meeting up with old friends whom we hadn't seen for awhile and meeting new friends who will hopefully become Kidical Mass regulars! I'm already looking forward to October's ride--a Halloweeny ride around East Portal Park full of fun dress up and silliness! Be sure to save the date--October 26th, more details to follow.