Tagged: San Francisco

DFL Final Round, Oakland

Today I flew from the West Coast of the United States to the South West of sunny England, whilst away I did some awesome stuff with some awesome people, a lot of which included riding bikes.
Sunday saw the final of the DFL race series held around San Francisco, the race, if you didn’t know has been going for 18 years now, and it’s free to enter if you ride in drag, if not then you pay a $5 entry fee. I took a whole bunch of photos from the race which included a number of Mash SF riders including Walton Brush who was leading the series & ended up taking the win this week & the overall.

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The course was right at the side of the bay, in a park, DFL is a totally underground race series.

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The Mash riders took full advantage of the chance to race in women’s clothing.

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There were girls & riders on all kinds of bikes.

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This sand trap was hard work & caught a lot of riders out, the more experienced riders chose the outside line.

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All kinds of surfaces were raced on at this course, something for everyone.

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Dylan from Mash embracing the drag race.

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This rocky section was another tricky part of the course which was run by most but the odd few riders rode it out.

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Even if you have a carbon cross bike with disc brakes, you can always still rock a dress.

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More fun than your average cross race!

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Walton & Kyle from Mash killed it, with Walton choosing to ride the rocks every time.

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A whole lot of nice bikes were in attendance at the race.

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The winners of the series (Men & Women) took home these incredible hand made metal backpacks!

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Post-race I took in some of the local SF sights as the fog came in across the bay.

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Port. More photos from my trip coming soon!

Critical Mass SF 20th Anniversary

So, last night I landed in San Francisco, and being the last Friday of the month it was Critical Mass night, now I’m not one to attend Critical Mass back home, but last night was a special one as it was the 20th anniversary of the event being held here in SF. I had borrowed myself a bike from the ever so awesome guys at Mash Transit & rode towards the start point.

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Just riding to the meeting point I must have bumped into a good 100 or so riders, and the rumour was that up to 10,000 cyclists would be taking part. These rumours were confirmed when we got to the start point, at the end of Market street & we were greeted by the sound of cheering, music & bike bells ringing out across the area.

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There were cyclists from all over the place, of all ages & on all types of bikes, from folding bikes right up to a 36″ wheeled beast, and a whole lot of home made machines too! This one being ziptied together rather than welded, hmmm. Also spot the news reader, film crews from across the area were here to cover this story.

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The mass set off soon after 6, and was escorted by a number of cops on motorcycles, which was nice as they blocked off any road we chose to ride down, which started as a set route, then got particularly random throughout the night.

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There were crowds of people lining the streets to take photos & show their support, there were also hundreds of Friday night commuters in cars being held up for ages as the 6 mile, yes 6 mile train of bikes went by! Some drivers were impatient, but most of them embraced the moving bicycle party.

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There were occasional stops for ‘circles’ at certain intersections, where we’d ride circles right in the middle of to road just to show that for that night, we owned the road, and not the cars.

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At one point we rode through a tunnel, which called for celebration as we rode totally car-less, and the noise & atmosphere was incredible. Like
Nothing I’ve experienced before.

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I rode with the group for 3 hours, and as more & more riders dropped out as it got dark, I called it a night. The bikes with boom boxes continues to ride, alongside thousands of others in a bit of a random route, but it must have gone on well into the night. Now I’ll stop boring you with words & badly taken photos, though soon I’ll put some badly shot video online so you can experience the madness for yourselves!

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Tim’s Back!!

You may have read recently that Ed’s long term love ‘Bob’ is back from it’s makeover, and you may or may not have realised that I have been in the good ol’ US of A for the last few days, hence the lack of posts from me, but influx of instagram photos. Well I’m back in the UK now, and loving the up & downs of the UK ‘summer’, I did make a couple of posts whilst away using my iPhone photos, and here are a couple more that came from my camera that haven’t yet been posted. I feel these make up for my lack of content of late. Don’t expect bikes in these photos, just some inspiring scenery.