The Emperor’s Ride

On the first of May I wrote that my friend and I rode to Market then and on to the financial district.  On Sansom we turned onto to Mark Twain and learned that we had arrived a half hour too early so we went to get coffee.  I went inside and stood in line too long.  Later we went across the street and met the organizers for the Emperor’s Ride.

There were about six people there and then a boardmember and his wife showed up.  After that a group from Scaramento appeared too.  I noted that quite a few others were around as well.  The organizers said a few words then and after a couple of us had some bike troubles we all rode off.

The route went up Commercial and down Clay to a couple of streets before heading to the embarcadero past Safeway.  The guy with the penny farthing had a bit of trouble keeping up but we paced him.  In fact I had to pass the group using road techniques just to make certain that we were doing the right things on North Point.  The climb on Polk the climb was steep so several people followed me across Van Ness to Chestnut.  We beat the ride there.  After that we rode around Fort Mason to the Green and had a picnic.

We sat there for at least an hour.  I had some tea and wine.  The organization’s leadership were nice enough to share.  An organizer asked if I would judge for best accessory and I chose a person that wasn’t necessarily well known in the group.  I felt that they needed appreciation.

I sat with the leadership a couple of times.  They had just finished with the may pole after I was writing.  I took a short walk alone in time to catch my breath.  Upon my return we started getting ready to go- eating the cookies and cantaloupe.

I offered to lead some people back but at the Van Ness and Bay exit from Fort Mason another person took us to North Point.  There were yelly honkers all the way to Front and Embarcadero so I suggested we enter the financial district and find our way home from there.

A few of us said bye to one group at the Pyramid and then went to Starbucks to say bye to the rest of the group.  Then the rest of us rode Leidesdorff to Pine.  I said by to one of the organizers at Montgomery station before going to Huckleberry’s with two others.  I got into a yelling match with some crazy lady at Golden Gate.  We saw a guy I knew at Hucks and when the ladies were done talking to the store manager we took Market to Duboce and split up.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.