Yesterday was my first venture into an organized bike ride: the
Tour du Port, 50 mile course, organized by
OneLessCar.org.From Their site:
Every day we advocate for providing safe and effective transportation alternatives for all citizens through education, lobbying, and facilitation between our communities, governments, and state and local representatives. We believe that Maryland can be an example of the economic and social good that comes from a society where everyone – regardless of age, physical condition or economic background - has the opportunity to bike, walk or use mass transit to get where they need to go.
Why did I do 50 miles, instead of, say the 40, 20, or 12 mile course? Well, after doing an 80 mile round trip to York and back this summer, I thought 50 seemed about right. I learned a few things after that ride that prepared me pretty well for this one. For one thing, I got the water consumption right: four liter-sized bottles. And, remembering how much my hands hurt after that ride, I wore gloves for this one. I brought enough energy bars, had the right clothes (not biker gear, just something warm but not heavy), and overall, I was better prepared than I had ever been before.
I took the Metro at 6: 30 a.m to get to the event, while it was still dark out. There were more people on there than I would have thought at that hour on a Sunday, and many were sleepy. For me, half the challenge of this ride was just getting up so early. When I got to the Canton Waterfront Park, I signed in, got a pink wristband, and was told to get a “cue sheet,” which was a list of all the directions (but sadly, no map). Quite a few of the riders were scratching their heads:
is this going to be confusing? How will we know where to go?
Luckily, the ride was pretty well marked. While the roads themselves were not closed to traffic, there were green arrows on the pavement, pointing which way to go, and at most of the major turns there were volunteers pointing the way.
If it is at all possible to read the cue sheets I have posted here, you might be able to figure out the route. I can tell you that we started at the park, went down through the Inner Harbor, to Federal Hill, then to Locust Point (where the volunteer pointing system broke down for a minute and a group of us got lost), then back to the harbor and over to Patterson Park, then into the heart of Dundalk and beyond…
Honestly, after a certain point I didn’t really know or care where I was. All I knew is that I was riding down a highway in East Baltimore, and as I am a pretty slow rider--ahead of the hundreds behind me but not really fast enough to keep up with the faster people--it did feel like a very solitary venture for long stretches. At least, until I looked behind me and saw more bikers coming.
The ride continued into the county, into farther points and places I’d never visited. There was the rest stop at
North Point State Park, which, as I checked the cue sheet, turned out to be the 32 mile marker. Only 18 to go…
It was then sometime after this stop, maybe on the second pass of Dundalk Community College that I began to hit that wall. Tiredness, wind, and the hills were starting to take their toll. I stopped to eat another Clif Bar, change up my water and watch some more bikers go by. It was really quite a turnout. It was amazing to think about how for this one day, bikes truly ruled the streets.
I finished the ride in just a little over 4 hours, which means I was going at a pace of about 12 or 13 miles an hour. Not too bad for me.
Biking is very important to me, perhaps even more so now that I do not have a car. I enjoy the activity, the exercise, the fact that it saves me from things like having to worry about parking tickets or buying gas, plus in most cases it beats riding the bus. I don’t bike to make a political statement in some kind of Critical Mass-y sort of way, nor do I take it seriously enough to have a technical conversation about it. It is simply something I do because I have always done it. That said, I whole-heartedly support what OneLessCar.org is trying to do. Maybe if they can get people to consider altering their behavior, we can have less-congested cities, and healthier people. And while I’m at it: kudos to Mayor Dixon and her support for this event. And kudos to the city for putting up more bike lanes and to the
Baltimore Bicycling Club for all those new bike racks around town.
