Type to search

Our ride to Pride

Decaturish updates

Our ride to Pride

Share
Gasp! Bikes are on racks in Piedmont Park! Summon the authorities!

Gasp! Bikes are on racks in Piedmont Park! Summon the authorities!

Gather around for liberal yuppie whiner story time, kids!

My wife and I decided we wanted to ride our bikes from Decatur to the Atlanta Pride Festival.

Atlanta wasn’t supportive of our idea. 

We first ran into problems at the East Lake MARTA. I swiped my Breeze Card to open the gate and got about halfway through before the gate locked onto my bike like the jaws of life. A commotion ensued. My wife tapped her card to open it, and I squeezed through. But since my wife used her card, it could not be reused to open the gate.

We stood on opposite sides of the gate, swearing at MARTA and each other, until I picked up the phone on the call box. I informed the first operator about the malfunctioning gate. He told me to hold on and then transferred me to an answering machine with dial pad prompts, which would’ve been great if the call box actually had a dial pad.

I called back and the second operator answered. She sounded generally annoyed that I would call and report problems. She huffed and said she’d send a MARTA Police Officer. That’s great news, since they’re a rare sighting at MARTA stations.

My wife decided to purchase another card in order to open the gate for her bike.

First hurdle cleared.

We got off at the Inman Park MARTA and rode the glorious Atlanta BeltLine over to Piedmont. Things were going well, until we got to the park. The staff for PRIDE told us that we were barred from locking up our bikes, even though a rack holding dozens of bikes was in plain view. Atlanta built one of the premiere bike trails in the Southeast but you can’t park your bike in one of its oft-visited stops (at least on PRIDE weekend). Brilliant.

Luckily, Intown Bicycles on Monroe let us use their bike rack.

So that’s how we overcame great adversity and made it to PRIDE weekend. The TV movie is in the works.

Tags: