Photo Carraol Images of Mexico City: Sunday cycling

Mexico City's Sunday cycling

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

MEXICO CITY ‑ On wheels, we charge: a vast and exultant army of cycling, skating, spinning, scooting, sweating warriors in the thrill of conquest.

We rule this city ‑ at least for a few hours.

Every Sunday morning, some of the biggest streets in car-flooded Mexico City are handed over to bicyclists, who roll in by the tens of thousands. Joining them are skateboarders, Rollerbladers, toddlers on push toys and parents behind strollers in what has become a weekly festival on (small) wheels.

The leftist government of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard launched the program in 2007, barring cars, trucks and buses from the regal Paseo de la Reforma and other streets around historic downtown. Once a month, the route is expanded to form a 20-mile engine-free circuit called the Cicloton.

The cyclist’s gain is the motorist’s loss. But city officials seek to limit traffic snarls by opening alternative routes and letting cars across key downtown junctions once the bikes have passed. On short stretches, cars and bikes share the street in rare harmony, separated by orange traffic cones. (If only the exhaust fumes stayed in their own lane.)

Though mocked by some as a political gimmick, the Sunday ride has proved highly popular since opening in May 2007. The shorter downtown rides routinely draw 10,000 or more participants, and the Cicloton as many as 70,000.

It’s an upside-down day. For a change, cars are the intruders while cyclists get a leisurely, intimate view that makes this huge and tumultuous city seem, well, not so huge and tumultuous.

We strap on helmets and spend two to three hours on a citywide loop: zooming past the glassy high rises and triumphal statues of Reforma, through graffiti-spattered precincts where sidewalk stands send up a tang of raw seafood, along normally jammed commercial boulevards lined with chain stores and billboard ads.

There are gleaming road bikes and creaking wrecks that appear to have predated the 1968 Olympics here. Signs abound of classic Mexican innovations, like the tiny wooden chair converted, by straps and blind faith, into a child’s bicycle seat.

http://therecord.blogs.com/take_the_lane/mexico-citys-sunday-cycli.html

Click here to view thumbnails of all participants in this theme day!

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