Another year, another great turn-out for this year’s Winter Solstice Bike Ride. People young and old converged on North Hagley Park at the end of Tuesday to show off their bike bling and go for a fun ride…
About 265 people (give or take a few) turned up on a variety of bikes decorated in all manner of electric goodness. (How do I know how many? Because I had the job of counting them!) Possibly the flurry of rain that showed up in the preceding hour deterred a few people, but fortunately it came to nothing, and temperatures were very mild. There were some pretty impressively decked out bikes and riders, and some special prizes were handed out for various great efforts. At 5.30pm the parade headed off around the periphery of the Park – a pity we couldn’t quite make use of the near-complete Uni-Cycle pathway. After squeezing past other construction works on Riccarton Ave and at the Hospital, everyone ended up near the Antigua Boatsheds, after which a few follow-up drinks at some local restaurants were in order.
As tail-end charlie and chief counter, I didn’t get the chance to grab any photos of the ride in action. But you can see plenty of great pics and videos by others on the Ride’s Facebook page – feel free to add your own too! We even made the TV News too…
Now roll on spring and summer!
Were you on the Solstice Ride? Was your bike all lit up?
Sorry to hijack this but we really need to spread the word to other cyclists to buy some decent bike lights! I’ve had to drive to work for the last few weeks (rather than bike) and the amount of cyclists with no lights or barely visible lights (really really faint/weak) is alarming!
I even had a scare where I could have hit a young man on a bike who was in dark clothes, with no reflectors and no lights. I only just saw him as I was turning into a road.
Seriously, I’m happy every time I see someone with a high powered led light! Someone should really get the message out that riding with underpowered or no lights at night is a death wish. Please let other cyclists know if their lights are cr@p or tell them to get lights if they have none, you could save them from serious harm. Cheers and ride safe!
I agree David that good lights are pretty important in the dark. But I’m getting pretty sick of the high-powered lights I regularly find glaring in my face as they approach from a distance. Helmet-mounted lights? Save them for the mountain-bike tracks (or at least switch to low-power). Handlebar-mounted lights? Point them DOWN! Horizontal is no good.