Moonlight Ramble

All these years of (a) living in St. Louis, (b) biking, and (c) needing fun things to do, and it's a little hard to believe I had never been on the Moonlight Ramble before.

Now I see why.  But having been on it, I also know how to do it better next year.

This year's Ramble unfortunately coincided with a trip to Oklahoma City, so I flew back into town on Saturday night, landing at 11 p.m., for the ride.  I had been up since 5:30 that morning.  I was tired and cranky.  Not a good start.

Also, there were a lot of people.  Strike 2.  And many of those people were children.  Strike 3.  And many more of them were asshole twenty-something overgrown boys.  Strike 4?

Now, I totally support kids riding bikes (with helmets, people!).  You gotta learn sometime, and when you're little, you have much less distance to fall.  But when you have 15,000 people trying to ride down Market Street and your adorable six-year-old is still trying to learn how to ride without weaving all over the road, you're just asking for trouble.

So the solution to most of these problems for next year, as I see it, is this: get there earlier!  This trip, I was precluded from early arrival by my flight time.  But next year...  Even if there are a few kids at the front of the pack, it won't take long to get out ahead of them and have a clear road.  Alternate choice: take the short route (which we did this year, and it helped).  Even though the proportion of young riders is probably higher on the short ride, there are fewer overall riders, hence much more room to maneuver.

As for the overgrown boys, that one is still TBD by society at large, I think.