The day after I completed my first AIDS/Lifecycle ride in 2016, I woke up in my own bed, stretched and basked in the afterglow of being done with the ride, turned on my phone, and felt my heart break. The night before, a young man shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
I felt the tragedy viscerally, piercingly. These people belonged to the same community I’d just spent a year training with and a week sweating and struggling and making crude jokes with. These are people I resonate with far more closely than many people of my own straight demographic. In these posts, and mostly at all times when I talk about the AIDS/Lifecycle ride, I speak of the incredible community, the sense of support, the boundless creativity… all the things that are part of “the love bubble.” And when I read about the Pulse shooting that Sunday morning, I realized that the love bubble was, painfully, just that. The world doesn’t work that way (yet) and probably never will.
It’s easy to feel invincible when you are riding 2500 strong through San Franciso, with rainbow flags waving and early morning couples standing and cheering with coffee mugs steaming in their hands. But the threat is always there. Sometimes, as we are gearing up to leave from the Cow Palace on the first day of the ride, someone will blow a tire while pumping it up. BANG!! The sound shatters the room filled with bikes and riders and adrenaline, and suddenly everyone is dead quiet. Terrified. Is this it? Is this the massacre we all secretly know is possible?
In Santa Maria, a conservative agricultural community, I’ve heard an epithet yelled from a passing pickup truck, and my blood ran cold, then red hot, then it was over.
Another time, as we were riding through Griffith Park, a deranged driver started yelling at us, screaming out epithets, and generally making an asshole of himself. We laughed afterwards but it was chilling to have that happen in our own town.
It honestly hasn’t been as often as I would think. But that’s not the point. The point is that it happens at all.
The worst was last weekend, and it didn’t happen directly to me, but to two of my closest riding buddies.
We had a ride planned for Saturday, but it was rained out. We all planned on meeting up for breakfast so we wouldn’t miss out on some precious hang out time (even though we see each other sometimes multiple times per week). So about a dozen of us descended upon a small acoustically-hostile diner and were yukking it up with each other, when the two people who had gone to the meet up location in Griffith Park to tell any stray riders that the ride was cancelled came in. They said there were some shenanigans at the park, but didn’t elaborate until afterwards.
Here’s what they told us:
As they were sitting in the car waiting to see if anyone was going to mistakenly show up, a man got out of a van that was parked some ways off. He walked up to their car and started talking to them through the window. He started off saying just generally weird shit, but then he started to get very threatening. “If you or any #(*$& @#*&#$” (using all the F-words) “ride around here any more, I’m going to shoot you.”
Whoa.
My friends were obviously shocked. The guy eventually returned to his van, but they were rattled. It should be noted here that they are a straight couple, did not have any ALC regalia on, nor any bikes in the car. How did he know who they were? Had he been watching us congregate there for weeks/months/years as we gathered in the parking lot in our bright jerseys, hugging each other, and riding off on our bikes? There was nothing about my two friends that outwardly indicated that they were gay or bike riders or even that they were part of a greater group. Was he waiting for us specifically that day? Did he really have a gun?
Further investigation indicated that yes, he had a n extensive rap sheet and yes, he could very easily have had a gun. Did the rain save our lives? What would’ve happened if we had decided to just meet up anyway, for a short ride, just to be together? Chilling. It really could have been us in the news that day.
What I tend to forget about ALC and the training rides and the whole event, is that it is activism in motion. It is putting ourselves out there despite the hatred, a colorful vibrant community, saying “Here we are! You can’t ignore us!” You can’t ignore 2500 bike riders in red tutus as they ride past Vandenberg on Day 5. You can’t ignore the hordes of people stopping for artichokes in Gilroy, or cinnamon buns in Pismo Beach. You can’t ignore a traveling group that stops for lunch in the small town of Bradley and donates SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS IN ONE DAY to your elementary school programs, out of pure love.
It is activism. It is advocacy. It is riding out loud. And it does change the people we touch.
I doubt we can touch everyone. And I beg the universe to not let us ever be destroyed by violence as we do this one crazy thing every year. It’s good work. It’s potentially risky work. And it’s absolutely work that needs to continue being done as long as guys with dark fantasies continue to sit in their vans and wait.
