Seattle Ride of Silence
The Ride of Silence is a nationwide bicycle ride to mourn those that we know who have been injured or have died in bicycle accidents on the public roads. I joined about 500 (my guess) other cyclists for this ride in Seattle.
The ride had a lot of publicity here. There was a great article about it in the Seattle Times which highlighted a serious accident that Gypsie Goss (one of the owners of Aaron’s Bike Repair) had at the start of 2006.
As I rode down to the start of the ride at Gas Works park I came acrossdozens of other cyclists who were going to the Ride of Silence. Once there I found a lot of my normal cycling buddies from the BOB list and SIR. We formed a small group near the front of the ride.
I don’t have a good estimate of how many people were there, but the crowd was huge. We filled much of the Gasworks parking lot and the group spread down into the park itself. There were interesting bikes everywhere, from the Chair Bike that Aaron, Gypsie, and Braxton rode, lots of XtraCycles and tandems, some interesting homebuilt recumbents, dozens of fixed gear bikes, and lots of road bikes. Itwas probably the most inclusive bike ride that I’ve been to in Seattle just judging by the crowd who showed up.
Theplanned route went over the Fremont Bridge, skirted the side of Queen Anne, down 15th Ave to downtown, looped through downtown,up Eastlake,through the U District, and finally went back to Gas Works park.
A few minutes past 7pm we headed out on the ride. At the first traffic light one of my major concerns was relieved. I was worried that cyclists on the ride would place more importance in staying together as a group then in traffic signals, but they didn’t. At Stone Way the light turned red and our group was divided. We kept going and caught up. This pattern was repeated throughout the ride, at times I was riding in a group with 20 people and at other times I was with a group of hundreds of cyclists. I loved looking backwards after one red light and seeing this view:
How often do you get to see a traffic lane jam packed with cyclists as far as the eye can see?
Having the group break up probably made a much larger time impact for observers. There was apparently a 30 minute steady stream of cyclists passing through a single point downtown. If we had held together this might have only been a 10 minute long group and less people might have seen us.
The cyclists on the ride did stick to the “silence” part of the name more than I expected. There was a little whispering here and there, but for the most part everyone was silent. The problem with this is that observers were always asking what we were doing, where we came from, and where we were going. No one would answer and I think this probably confused bystanders instead of forwarding our cause. Next year I hope to print up some business card sized flyers that I can hand out, and maybe others will do the same.
After the ride a few of us went over to Hale’s Ales for dinner and a beer and had a nice time hanging out.
Overall I think the ride was a moderate success. The biggest issue is informing the public on why we are doing the ride.
alex