October Kidical Mass

With our new Sac Kidical Mass board members cranking out the awesome ideas and helping with all the crazy organizing, I knew this ride was going to be a blast! What I wasn't prepared for was the sheer volume of riders who showed up! 

Going back a few weeks, we called another awesome KM meeting in which we had about 8 folks show up. There were some great thoughts going around and people volunteered to take over different aspects of the ride. The theme, of course, was a Halloween-y evening ride around Curtis Park. Many emails went back and forth between our board members as the route was perfected, goodies gathered and made, and the beautiful flyer was spread far and wide.  

Created from the mind of the brilliant Jen Dossetti!

Fifteen people RSVP'd for the ride via Facebook events. I knew some folks wouldn't make it and some extra folks would show up so we planned on having about 20 goodie bags for kids. 

Although I had planned to decorate both bikes, my procrastinating led to only one bike dressing up. The Bullitt was supposed to be a pirate ship. 

This took a lot of tape and tinfoil but I am pretty proud!

We rode over to the park. I should have tested the Mundo Harley earlier as it was super uncomfortable to ride--ape hangers next time! The one difficulty of the park was that the gate was pretty narrow to get big bikes through and we ended up with a LOT of bike bikes showing up! More and more people trickled over and filled the playground! Stephen and his family brought goodie bags with stickers, bubbles, and other kid-friendly treats. Melissa brought over delicious homemade yummies like apple muffins and bars, pumpkin candies with white chocolate, and chocolate bike-pops as well as some fun reflective stickers and swag. 

Photos by Jose. Little Brother helped himself to many goodies.

The buffet bench

Kids ran around, people decorated their bikes, talked to each other, and ate! More riders kept showing up! Some of the costumes were incredible! 

Melissa as the Snow Queen! 

Keith's bakfiets ocean. I wish I had gotten his shark fin costume and his son's octopus outfit!

I counted at least 5 Mundos and 1 Boda Boda!

We gathered up our riders around 5:30pm. One part I wish I had focused more on was being a bit more strict on following our guidelines. With a group this size, about triple what we've been used to, it was difficult at times to make sure everyone was keeping themselves safe. There was at least one rider who was consistently on the wrong side of the road and a few others who would get a bit squirrely every so often. It was easy for folks to get comfortable and ride in a more relaxed fashion than I would prefer. I think we turned a bit into a Critical Mass, although very friendly with lots of waves and cute kids. We had a few clueless drivers try to cruise through our group on the long straight-aways, but overall, it was a safe and fun ride. 

I counted 75 people, although I probably missed a few! We had one little rider do the whole 3 mile loop on a balance bike! He was the winner of one of the Ikea reflective vests that Jarrod donated to the ride. 

Photo by Chuck Hutcheson. Check out Christina's helmet! She has such great style!

The sun went down as we rode. It was cool to see all the great lights turn on. 

Unfortunately, this was the only photo I got of my costume. Please excuse the creepy reflector-eyes! 

This was such a fun ride! It's incredible what can happen when we have a great team of dedicated people working together to create such a wonderful event! This is just the early stages of what we hope will become an established part of Sacramento biking life. Now I can't wait for next month's food bank ride!