Cyclists Lead Each Other on Long and Merry Chase

There’s a scene in Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” in which a group of knights, outfitted by Twain’s reluctant time traveler, ride to the rescue of the king on bicycles. I used to think that scene was a little ridiculous.

Sunday morning, though, it looked a lot more plausible. Inevitable, even.

Standing somewhere in the middle of the huge pack of nearly 13,000 cyclists bunched on Anaheim’s Orangewood Avenue for the start of the Orange County Centennial Bike Ride, I started to imagine that the riders behind me were carrying lances, pointed at my back. It was an unsettling thought: thousands of bloodthirsty people in lycra shorts and Cinzano jerseys screaming “Charge! Charge!”

But everything at the starting line, and at the staging area before the ride, was chatty and convivial and smooth. You clumped around in ungainly cleated cycling shoes, or paid a visit to the free fruit juice and Gatorade stands, or filled up your water bottle, or had your steed checked out by a legion of mechanics. Mostly, you checked out everybody else’s hardware and started conversations with, “How do you like those pedal bindings/handlebars/wheels/gloves/speedometers/hot pink shorts?”

It wasn’t a race, announcers kept reminding us over loudspeakers. The ride would be paced. No need to rush. And most people near me in the 25-mile group vowed compliance. After all, the sun was coming out, the air was heating up. Who wants to burn your legs up when you can sightsee?

Still, there’s something about riding in or near a pack of cyclists who look like they know what they’re doing--the ones with the deeply defined calves spinning away relentlessly--that pulls you along like a magnet. Newton’s law of universal gravitation applies in spades in a pack of cyclists.

It’s a peculiar kind of communal exhilaration and a little frightening at first. The starting horn goes off and instantly things become . . . mechanized . I had run in weekend 10-kilometer races and other events where the only moving parts had Reeboks on the ends but this was different. Gear handles clicked; brake pads whined; chains ratcheted on sprockets; leather foot straps zipped closed; tires began to hiss against the asphalt and suddenly you were in the middle of an accelerating mass that’s about as inexorable as such a thing can get, short of a cavalry charge.

Steady speed made many riders expansive. All it took was a solid 18 m.p.h. with the wind at the back to touch off inter-pack conversations, sharing of water bottles and the inevitable technical queries when a rider spotted a new mechanical doodad on a neighbor’s bike. Spectator turnout on the city streets of Orange and Santa Ana was light--we figured the adoring masses were following the 100-mile riders--but if anyone was lonesome for conversation, the nearest ear was usually rolling along only a few feet away.

There were no roaring crowds at the festival site at the old Orange County Courthouse turnaround in Santa Ana, only a few enthusiastic-looking, officially dressed people standing at the curb. But any disappointment at the turnout vanished when the riders saw that the grinning staffers were holding out cups of water. One of them whacked me on the seat of my shorts as I passed and yelped, “Good job!” It helped.

Silliness appeared occasionally. One rider wore a helmet with a stuffed pink flamingo perched on top, and another brought a bird, too--a live parrot which sat on his shoulder throughout the ride. One little girl rode a small bike with a sign attached to the handlebars declaring that it was her birthday. And every tender derriere ached in sympathy at the sight of a group of cyclists riding antique high wheel bikes.

The common feeling, however, seemed to be one of delighted freedom, of being able to ride at a fine steady clip straight down the middle of blocked-off city streets and well-tended bike trails, of zipping smartly through three cities and over 25 miles with nothing to do the work but a pair of legs.

And, for the cyclists like myself, for whom a bike ride is often a solitary ritual, riding with a pack was a new and immediately addicting variation of an enjoyable sport. More is merrier. And 13,000 people on bicycles was very merry indeed.

Mott is a regular contributor to The Times Orange County Edition.