I went on a 20-mile bike ride with the North Hollywood chapter of the Midnight Ridazz. It was my first time riding with a real LA biker gang.

I arrived at the NoHo park at around 9:30 and as I waited around the crowd grew. By 10 there were around 200 people milling about, and eventually we rolled out. The pack filled three lanes and was escorted by the NoHo police bike team for a bit. Someone at the head of the pack had a mountain bike pulling a cart with a soundsystem, so our riding theme was AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck.’ This pretty much set the tone for the music selection for the night, although by the end it was mostly Minor Threat and Op Ivy.

The hundreds of people in the pack basically took over my section of the valley for the night. It was less of a bike ride than a respectable-sized parade. We stopped at a few 7-11 stores along the way. All ~200 of us, all dressed up like the Blues Brothers. I was sporting a white button-up and black skinny tie with stunna shades. Others were wearing complete black suits and matching black hats. At the first convenience store stop we played ‘Rawhide’ on the portable PA and all sang along. We were truly on a mission from God.

We rode up to the top of a six-story parking garage for a group photo and spent the better part of an hour up there. After getting a good view and riding down, I saw a man fly off his bike and hit the concrete like a side of beef. He didn’t get up for a bit, and when his friends finally helped him up he looked like someone had taken a bat to his nose. The reflection of the light in the pool of blood on the pavement is burned into my memory now. Less than a quarter of a mile later, a new friend I made got punished by an unexpected speed bump. He wobbled for a few feet then came down hard, his fork twisted and his front wheel taco’d.

It was some of the most fun I’ve had in LA, and the second most amazing thing is that it was ok with everyone and we weren’t all ticketed or worse. It was a large mob of rowdy cyclists creating anarchy in the streets, yet the police never lifted a finger to try to dipserse the crowd. In a lot of ways the entire affair reminded me of Burning Man. It was very Safety Third and very boisterous. There were people of all stripes in attendance, and it was slow-paced enough that children and grandparents could’ve kept up.

Update: There’s video!

Sleeveface.

this is awesome.

Burning Man is over four months away, but I’m already shopping. First on the list: A proper megaphone.

Safety siren gets attention fast, hold the trigger down before turning on the siren and you will get the whoop whoop sound.

I haven’t forgotten you, loyal masses of readers.

I finally felt compelled to check in with the blog to air my gripes about flickr’s sad new video service.

“Ooh, exciting, flickr is finally doing video! I bet it will rock!” I thought to myself as I stumbled upon this techcrunch post.

Sadly no. They basically ripped off Vimeo, badly. Video posts are limited to a disappointing 90 seconds or 150 megabytes, whichever is smaller. Not enough to make me think about using it in favor of my youtube account for even a second.

Flickr was so ahead of the game a few years ago that if they’d kept up the pace of innovation they would’ve been beating the pants off YouTube right now. I can’t help feeling that ever since they got sucked into the Yahoo machine they’ve basically been phoning it in. Once Microsoft takes over, they’re dead. Hopefully a window will open that will allow me to flee with my stuff and take it to greener pastures when that day comes.