Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A jolly good ride, ol' chaps, jolly good!

My husband is what I call a "bike brain".  He identifies bike frames on the fly the way I identify birds.  It's impressive.  I often receive several bike related links from him each day and I see him longingly reading about the interesting bike cultures  in places like San Francisco and, mother of all bike places, Portland Oregon.  When he saw that a Tweed Ride was happening here in Seattle it was a bike dream come true.  So last Sunday found me dressed up in some second hand digs to get a decent early 20th century tweed-y look and heading off to Cal Anderson Park for the first ever Seattle Tweed Ride.






Over fifty people joined the tea-time picnic and then the slow paced parade like ride from Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill to Gas Works Park in Fremont.  We got plenty of stares and grins, I guarantee that.






For those, like my husband, who enjoy bike gawking it was heaven. The bikes ranged from modern road bikes to mountain bikes, to fixed gear, to cargo bikes to one vintage European mail bike.





There were lots of fine looking tweed-y ladies and gents, lots of laughs and a good time all around.







Those good times continued on for a number of folks who after gasworks continued the ride to a good British style pub.  Mark and I opted out of the pub fun for a leisurely, if long, ride home along the Seattle waterfront where, at Starbucks, the gentleman who made our coffee turned out to be one of our fellow tweeders.  Love that small world stuff.

Our ride eventually took us over the West Seattle Bridge and along the west Seattle waterfront where we rode off into the sunset and the peace of our Alki neighborhood.





I'm looking forward to next time already and there's no doubt that Mark is too - if the permanently plastered grin on his face was any indication.


More pictures can be found here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I declare - is that my big brother riding a bicycle WITHOUT a helmet?? I won't show Connor....

Maurie Kirschner said...

Mark said we we would have to claim "parade ride exemption". :D

Notice though that we are wearing helmets after we left the "parade"!!!

Anonymous said...

hey that was way cool,those out fits were the absolute most,such a dapper look ab

Maurie Kirschner said...

Thanks, Aunt B! Glad you enjoyed them!

EcoGrrl said...

way cool - they just had a tweed ride down here in pdx as well :) great pix!

it's funny you talk about seattle as if there's no bike culture - i loved being a bike grrl when i lived there :) (except for the time my tire got stuck in the railroad tracks down by lake union and i went flying! more embarrassing than owie, of course)

Ange said...

Being an avid biker myself who is in no way able to identify frames as they fly past, I think this ride must have been absolutely truly amazingly awesome. You must come over for the Tour de France one day!

Unknown said...

Ahhh ... you and your husband are just too cute! Great pictures ... and the ride looks like a lot of fun! I used to spend tons of time at Gasworks Park ... one of my favorite places!

BTW ... just headed over to your hubby's blog. It looks like it's going to be a great site ... I look forward to hearing all about his alternative & earth-friendly transportation!

Take Care!

Small Footprints
http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com

Bikejuju said...

Jolly good, jolly good.

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