Back in the Saddle...

After having not updated for months and months, and being on the brink of graduation with nothing on the immediate horizon, I've decided to get back into writing things down when they happen.  And so much has happened.  The Chill Chinatown Mosey had started to become unmanageable.  Every week new gangs of unruly teenagers would show up, and despite our warnings, refuse to listen to us.  Many of them would steal from the local stores we frequented, tag right on the fronts of bars or buildings, and leave trash when they were asked to clean up after themselves.  Soon they were showing up in larger and larger numbers, to the point where we were outnumbered.  Some regulars were deterred by the new company we were attracting, and stopped coming as often.  Finally, after one night of futile scheming we were able to ditch them, and they seemed to finally be discouraged from trying to pursue us.  This was after weeks of changing the start location all over; they'd merely scour downtown, find us, and call their friends to catch up.  One night at Bogie's after having the cops called on them while they were tagging, they swore us off and vowed never to return, and since then, h

aven't.  All these unnecessary theatrics have made me think about how easily the ride could have completely fall apart.  We weren't united, and out of necessity I had to assert myself.  There were some weeks when only six or seven people showed, and it didn't feel like a Mosey at all.  But when we debated ending the ride entirely, people complained, and got upset at the prospect.  So we hung in there and had a series of very small rides.  Now, somehow we have successfully weeded out the kids who were causing trouble, gotten our core of about 20 or 25 back, and still manage to see a couple new, chill people every week.  I don't even know how it happened, but dear God am I grateful it did.  It was an easy decision to remove the ride from MidnightRidazz.  It was too hard to control who was coming, and that's how we ended up with the problems that we did.  The Mosey was never meant to be a huge, party ride.  It was founded on some important principles: riding slowly, and having a good time.

All of these problems with the Mosey coincided with my reading Steve Sample's The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership for a class.  The single most important thing he said in there was that to be a good leader you've got to withhold judgment.  When someone says something to you, don't decide right away whether or not you agree.  I thought this was the most sound advice I'd ever heard.  Also, when you try to actually do it, it's very difficult.  Think about how many hundreds of times a day you are confronted with opportunities for judgment.  It is the easy thing to know what side you are on; it is a much harder thing to wait until you have all sides of the story.  All the kids who came on the ride who ended up being problematic looked very very similar.  Everyone had an equal chance not to tag, or steal, or litter.  But we certainly didn't want anything to do with the ones who did.  I don't understand these kids who come on rides: no tubes, no pump.  Last week on the Mosey, a kid got a flat, we stopped, he, and none of his handful of friends had a tube or anything else to fix the flat luckily we loaned them the fixins.  At the next stop he got another flat since his tire was probably fucked up, and asked to use my second and last tube.  I said no, and he insisted that nobody else at Den Dinner had a tube.  I told him they probably just didn't want to give it to him since they knew they'd never see him again, or at least that he'd never return the favor.  I told him his options were to borrow a couple bucks from his friends and offer someone money if nobody would give him a spare tube, try to patch it (ended up being impossible), watch one block out to a main street to catch a bus, or call someone for a ride.  He told me he had no money, and nobody to come and get him.  So I asked him what the hell he was doing out here with us in Beverly Hills if he had no backup plan.  I think he felt pretty silly, but who know if that will be enough to cause him to change in the future.  His friends somehow got him home, because by the time we were ready to leave he was already gone.  I must be missing something.  Isn't the best part of riding a bike being self-sufficient, and efficient?  If you are just going to get stranded somewhere, what is the point?