The Bike Week Group Commute

Well, that was kind of fun, but the TTC strike, instead of being the huge boon that I had hoped it would be, turned out to result in millions of cars backing their way up Yonge Street, almost all the way to Lawrence. Since we were all in a group, we couldn't (or didn't want to) filter past them on the right, so instead of half an hour, it ended up taking us 45 minutes to get from Lawrence to Bloor, by which point all the other commuters had left. By the time we got to the pancake breakfast, the line was far too long for me, and so I just went straight to work. (I should probably mention that this happened to me last time, and so I had already packed a container of Cheerios and powdered milk which I ate when I got to the office.)

An idea for next time might be to head down one of the side streets, maybe even one with a bike lane? That way it would both be a faster ride, and would show people how they might get down to work on their bikes when they didn't have police blocking traffic for them. (I wouldn't commute down Yonge street every day, so it's not really a great introduction to bike commuting in the city.)

Apart from those minor problems, it was good to meet Darren, who had twice as many people show up for his unofficial commute as I did, (two, counting himself, as opposed to one, counting myself, ;) and I got interviewed for a video of some sort. I'm afraid I didn't come off that well. I seemed to be repeating myself, and stammering a lot, but I hope whomever it was got some useful footage out of me.

In other news, ouch!