Ride your bike with no hands and no helmet through traffic

LOCATION: Streets of DC TIME: First and last Friday of the month, if you want to be social about it* EQUIPMENT: Yourself, bicycle, fluid in your inner ear, cute little dress OPTIONAL (but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED): underwear

The first time I went to Amsterdam I was overwhelmed with joy, probably like when the ugly duckling met the other swans, or the friendless high school geek went to his first Star Wars convention. Finally, a city that understood my bike-riding philosophy! Bikers zoomed through sidewalks, down roads, over curbs - in fact, anywhere that gave them the straightest line to their destination. They scattered gaggles of tourists like small children running at pigeons, grandly disregarding the numerous dedicated bicycle lanes. They wore business suits and cocktail dresses and flowing skirts and silly purple scarves. They talked on their cellphones, munched apples, waved at their friends, and fixed their hair as they rode, with impeccable balance. And none of them wore bike helmets. Oh, they were such bad-asses.

*sweeping national generalization alert* It seems that people in the States have a more extremist attitude about their sports than the Dutch. For some reason - despite the fact that bicycles are cheap, efficient, non-polluting, maneuverable, and fantastic exercise - most people don't ride them. (And some people even feel the need to go and invent the Segway, regarding which any explanation I've heard for why to buy a $5,000 scooter with a complicated motor instead of an elegantly simple $100 bicycle strikes me as total codswallop.) Yet it seems that people who do get into their bicycles are more likely to really get into it, complete with the purchase of special shoes and shiny pants and water-delivery systems and pedal clips and helmets. To go with the hoary old Protestant culture rubric, the hobby is seen as another arena for you to do work, rather than as a convenient facilitator for the rest of your life. Not that I don't think it's cool to really get into your bicycle! But it's just a shame that car-driving people might be intimidated by the perceived startup cost, and never even give it a try.

Me, I like to ride my bike with no hands - it's good balance practice for yoga, plus you can do arm stretches as you ride, and generally have an extraordinarily playful time feeling the wind whip against you. But in a city like DC, it usually gets a stare, and sometimes it sends me into paroxysms of self-consciousness, like "They think I'm showing off! But I'd be doing this even if I was alone! But I do like getting glances from other cute bicyclists. Admit it, I am showing off. Oh, is that wrong? But I don't want to stop!" One night I was riding my bike no-handedly to a party in Arlington, wearing a little purple dress. Going over the Key Bridge I noticed a group of cute guys walking towards me, smiling and clapping. I glowed and stretched my arms high in the air; I was, dear reader, very definitely showing off. Then a breeze picked up out of nowhere and flipped my dress up around my shoulders.

It totally served me right. Oh well, at least I was wearing underwear.

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*On the first and last Fridays of every month, bikers gather in large groups around Dupont and shut down traffic in a Critical Mass. It's fun! You should go! I haven't gone yet myself, or I would have tried to describe it more. But I hear that afterwards, everyone goes drinking, and we all know that bikers are hot.**

**Or at least, my only chance not to flee back to Australia immediately.