Denver Cruiser Ride! Best... time... EVER!

I was lucky to be tipped off to the Denver Cruiser ride last night. Best time ever. This ride happens every week, and it's huge. There are three starting points that all meet up during and after the ride. The estimate I heard was 600 people last week. It sounds big, but I cannot dispute the numbers. At the party afterward there was loud bumping music in the park, and it looked like 1,000 people at least.

I started squirreling my way over to the ride from Dan's house. My couch-host lives about 8 miles from downtown in the 'Glendale' area, and nearly the whole trip was on a bicycle path. The entire city is a bicycle path. I have been going everywhere, and it's all been on awesome paths. Here's what I do: I check my fancy-phone for Google directions, and invariably I am massaged right onto a beautiful path.

I got a six of talls on my way to the start of the ride.

I arrived at the same time as another girl. Early. Actually, I was exactly on time, but everyone knows to leave much later than that. We were both sort of looking around trying to make sure we were in the right place. There was a smattering of bicycles. Not in the hundreds. (An hour later, there would be no doubt... hundreds filtered in slowly. Every kind. Hundreds.)

"Buy you a beer?" Ashley asked this.

Well this keeps getting better, I thought. She's going to buy me a beer. That's a novel twist. Easy answer, too. We sat at a table and didn't have much to talk about. She works at a dispensery. Pot is legal here, and that's where you get it. She works at a high end joint, so to speak - not one of the many skeezy places with a pot leaf painted on the side. They cater to doctors and lawyers who want to be discreet.

She seemed composed and proper. I was surprised that she had "evil cunt" tattooed on her inner lip. She asked if I had any tattoos, and boy do I ever. I like that question.

We shared beers and mostly rode together. She just got a bicycle recently after a 9-year hiatus from riding. It's a cruiser. She's mostly slow and not traffic-savy, 'cause she's only been riding for a matter of days. I was drunk and I'm very traffic-savy. I wanted to start punching holes in shit. I wanted to ride aggressively, take lanes and ride at speed. I mostly (mostly) restrained myself because her beer was in my second waterbottle cage. My beer was in my main watterbottle cage right on my handlebars. Slick setup.


The police have a hands-off approach to all this. You can have open beers. You can dress like a jerk and smoke a joint. If you don't become a belligerent litterbug, you're in the clear.

I hung out with Ashley till late, and we found stuff to talk about. I'm sure there's much more to the story. I got on the verge of way too fucked up, and that's where bicycle paths really shine.

I wasn't the most goosed... I helped a drunk couple who couldn't hold their bicycles upright. The girl dropped one of the Denver bike-share bicycles twice while I stood there. I found their hotel on my fancy-phone, and handed it to the guy to make sure they could absolutely make it the two or three blocks.

I took the 8 mile cruise back to Glendale, convinced that I was moving to Denver. This is it! Every week! Dan and Nicole were still awake when I arrived. They are night owls and work closely with computers and the internet universe.