Providence RI Night Ride

We got stuck in traffic leaving New Bedford, MA.  We made up the time on the highway while driving to Providence, RI to meet some fellow riders at 5:30.  We were going to be 15 minutes late.  Giving us 45 minutes for the three mile spin to the start of the ride.  One mile from out exit, traffic was stopped. Road sign ahead said, “Accident at 95 junction, left lanes closed.”  We got to the meetup at 6:15 and by the time we got to downtown Providence, the park was deserted.  I approached two sketchy looking men and asked if they had seen a group of bikes.
“Yea, you just missed them” as he pointed toward their route.

A bit down the road we saw a group of formal attired people and asked them the same question.  They were very drunk and convinced we were on some kind of reality show.  They wanted to know if they won something.  We took their cue and raced off in the direction they pointed.

We decided to ride the reverse route confident we would eventually bump into the group eventually.  We didn’t, and decided to ride back to the downtown park.  We hung around for 30 minutes or so and they finally showed.  We told of our chasing them down and were told that they did the ride in the reversed of the posted route.

In short, we rode Providence with the mayor without ever seeing him.

Just to make matters worse, a couple of them told us that they saw us riding like crazy people early in the ride, but never though of signaling us.  I didn’t get much video on this ride and what I got was pretty helter skelter.  It’s the best I could muster on this crazy, but fun, night.

Ride with the Mayor of Providence, R.I. from John Sullivan on Vimeo.