Last Sunday Phil and went on a bike tour of the downtown Minneapolis area. From the description we thought it would be about 20-30 people and a tour guide. What we found when we arrived at he Walker Art Center (the start point of the tour) was several thousand people.

I guess they meant tour as in tour de France or ‘let us tour around town on our bicycles in a turn of the century kind of way’ (see image at left). The grounds around the Walker Art Center were crawling with bikes and people and cars. I have never seen so many lumpy, mis-shapen, spandex encased men in my life. It didn’t matter if they were 5′4″ and 350 lbs or 6′7″ and 165 lbs, these guys were going to stretch the shiniest most obnoxious fabric they could find from their neck to their knees. It was like witnessing an accident. I knew I shouldn’t gawk at the horrors in front of me, but I couldn’t turn away until my brain understood what it was looking at.

It was a relief to finally start the ‘tour’ which turned out to be 15 miles around several of the ritziest lakeside downtown Minneapolis neighborhoods. It was a pretty fun couple of hours and the morning was perfect for it. We met a bunch of other GM people at the tour. This is a picture of Phil and me with other GM new comers Wei and Jie after the tour:

Wei, Colleen, Philip, Jie

Wei, Colleen, Philip, Jie