Have Bike Will Travel
By April on Apr 30 Filed In Austin, Texas, Events, Sweet Bikes 2 Comments
When I was riding last night on the Thursday Night Social Ride, I contemplated this blog post and thought that I would start by saying how awesome it is to ride with 300 other social, bicycle-lovers around town. I LIVE for Thursday evenings for this reason. We meet up, we ride together for miles, stopping here and there to party and always end up at a bar that welcomes us with open arms and FREE beer. Is there anything better than this?
Well, yes. Now that you mention it, there is: Discover the City on Two Wheels. Thanks to Elliott McFadden (author of one of my favorite bike blogs in town, Austinontwowheels.org), who came up with the idea to help get the community into doing more than just cruising around Town Lake on their bikes by launching sponsored, social rides around town that would have specific destinations, like the upcoming Pampered Pedal Ride. Pay a little bit of money for hours of cycling around Austin to check out places like Boggy Creek Farm where an incredible meal was prepared and a private tour of the farm was given to all of the riders. Take the inaugural ride, the Taste of Downtown Tour, which led riders like Tina Gallivan (super-cool chick that works in accounting here at SLT) to various places around downtown in search of new and tasty places to grub.
I was lucky enough that my buddy, Keith Byrd had some time to sit and talk with me about why he and Elliott are making the dream a reality. He spoke to me about how great it was that on the inaugural ride riders were represented from 18 years of age up to 80 and how exciting it was for the vendors/sponsors to share this fun opportunity with the community of riders. The key with this new venture is to keep it as local as possible (vendor/destination-wise) and to show people that you can do anything you’d normally do around town on a bicycle.
Per Tina, On Saturday April 10th, I participated in the Taste of Downtown Tour organized by Keith Byrd and Elliot McFadden. It was an awesome experience, especially as a beginner to the cycling world. I went with one friend but left with a few! It’s great to meet new people who share the same interest as you-biking!
The tour started at Bo Concept on 2nd Street where we all were able to test ride the Dutch demo bikes. (I took some pix of them-the purple and white ones) They’re rather tall for me, but from a friend of mine who did test ride them, she said they had an awesome feel to them, when you get the hang of it.
Once we took off, we rode through the streets (following the laws of course) and rode through Town Lake. Our first stop was at Chupacabra on 6th street where we were fed delicious quesadillas and margaritas. I was especially impressed how they valet parked our bikes wherever we went. Then we took the streets and rode some more until we reached our next destination which was Frank. At Frank we were served different types of exquisite sausages as well delicious margs! Our last and my favorite stop was at Halcyon, just around the corner from Frank. At Halcyon we were served s’mores, chai tea and dark chocolate espresso martinis. Need I explain why this was my favorite spot? LOL! But seriously…the whole ride was amazing and I thought it was organized very well.
As a beginner rider, it gave me the confidence I need to ride the streets and the ride guides were helpful in leading the pack and making sure nobody was left behind. The sponsors for the ride: Bo Concept, Bicycle Sport Shop, etc. did a great job helping Keith and Elliot organize this thing because it was wonderful! It definitely encouraged me to want to participate in more of Austin on Two Wheels’ rides!
(Tour photos by Tina Gallivan)
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& for the record, the Pampered Pedal Ride on Saturday was MORE incredible than I could have expected!
Thanks to Whitney, April S., Tina, and Sarah for joining me!