Midnight Ridazz Redux

Did Midnight Ridazz again last night. This time there was a news crew who followed us and interviewed people in the parking lot before we started, though they didn’t interview me. (They were only interviewing people with crazy costumes.) We rode from Echo Park down to USC and back. I think it’s kind of funny that I keep driving an hour to join bike rides that end up going around my immediate neighborhood. This ride involved some pretty serious hills, and it is not easy to ride up a steep hill amongst a crowd of 500 without colliding with people. One guy was shouting funny stuff like, “I love this city! Yeah! You can’t spell ‘playa’ without ‘L.A.’!” There was a heavy police presence this time. We were followed for an hour or so by a police helicopter, known affectionately(?) around here as the “ghetto bird.” If I looked back, I could see it shining its floodlight down on the riders behind me, and the tableaux was eerily reminiscent of the tripods in the new War of the Worlds movie. (I mean, the ghetto bird doesn’t have legs, obviously, but in the dark you can certainly imagine that it does.) As we rounded a corner downtown, the police had detained one of the riders and were asking for ID. The mood of the crowd changed instantly. Whereas earlier they’d been waving to police, now they started booing. One guy started riding up and down the line chanting, “Who sucks? Cops suck.” But later we ran into the guy they’d stopped, and it turned out they’d just let him go. I had been looking forward to seeing some of my new random acquaintances who’d said they’d be there, but either they didn’t show or I just couldn’t find them among the hordes (and the hordes were massive). Toward the end of the ride, I was really struggling. I was already tired from exercising in the afternoon, and as the guy with the bag I was carrying all the water bottles for our group. I also discovered, near the end, that my tires were really low. Finally, utterly exhausted, I made it back to my car and went in search of food. Fortunately, the Jack in the Box drive thru is open at 1:00 a.m.