Saturday, April 25, 2009

Critical Mass!

CM group shot

As is customary, CM went down on Friday. A solid 13 riders were in the mix, and we set out from the carousel in Bushnell Park at around 6:15. Ken had the good graces to bring a ginormous boom box, Joel had the good graces to use his mountain man skills (lately matched by his mountain man beard) to secure the boom box to Ken's rear rack with rope, and the rest of us just had the good graces to rock out:

Mr. Boombastic

We looped around downtown a bit then headed south on Main Street, eventually went out Franklin, looped down South and back on Wethersfield, cut through Colt Park and past the Sports Sciences magnet school, and ended up at Charter Oak Landing, where we took the lovely group shot above. Then we headed back downtown, a few of our number split of to various points unknown (to me), and the remainders headed to Kenny's (a.k.a. Red Rock Tavern) on Capitol for beers. There was karaoke going on, along with some sort of rugby event, so your humble correspondent had to hit 'em with the Guantanamera to get the joint jumpin'. Nothing gets the rugby girls swooning like Guantanamera, let me tell you.

Anyway, here's some pictures of the event (as always, click on a picture to see a larger version):

Critical Mass Hartford  April 2009

CIMG4377

Rudimentary cargo trailer
We saw this guy on Wethersfield Ave. with a very rudimentary cargo trailer - so rudimentary, in fact, that it was just a shopping cart tied to a bicycle. While we recognized that such a set-up would likely prove problematic when heavily loaded or during downhill stops, we also thought it would be awesome to customize a shopping cart with bike wheels and a proper hitching system, then put in a car battery, an amp, and some fat house speakers (so the new shit can rock from Bronx to Massapequa). Ken and I will be getting on that project soon.

3 comments:

Bianca said...

Great portrait!

Billy Hoyle said...

Bianca,
Maybe next time you and your Gramama can be in it. And we can try Gramama's home-cooking from a doggiebag.

Bianca said...

Sounds like a plan Joel, Lasagne for all who make it up the Ridge Road hill.