third annual philadelphia tweed ride.

the philadelphia tweed ride was started in 2008, with a group of 10 celebrating a friend's birthday. i believe that the birthday man read about tweed rides in various other cities (such as london) and wanted to do a ride in philadelphia. we all dressed in our tweedy-finest and rode around the city. we stopped at the oldest bar in philadelphia and ate bread, cheese, and beer in the park while playing hoop toss and riding around on tandems. here's a picture from the first ride - can you spot me?
the next tweed ride was a much different ordeal. this one was well advertised, facebook events were created, et cetera. the meeting place was at waterworks, a large pavillion overlooking the schuylkill river. a small group showed up at first, and then slowly but surely, more and more tweed ride participants began to arrive. in all, there were over 100 people that rode! there was a contest for most dapper chap, most snappy lass, most stylish steed (bicycle), and most marvelous moustache. we rode around the city, yelled things like "cheerio!", and wore an absurd amount of tweed.

here are some pictures from last year's ride:

bryan and i! this is our tandem, which is in quite a sorry state right now. we attached the old picnic basket to carry around our bread and cheese and beer. on me: vintage skirt, vintage blouse, old blazer from khols, vintage boater hat, vintage fur collar, and lace parasol from brussels (courtsey of my pops). on bryan: my socks (hah!), vintage pants altered into knickers by moi, vintage everything else.

from left to right: stephen, phil, greg, and me! my hair was very blonde then, no? i love the tweed cycling caps.

we walked our bikes up elfreth's alley, the oldest street in philadelphia. the man in the cape is dane, whose beard couldn't be any more appropriate.

society hill, somewhere. what would a tweed ride be without a little pipe smoking? of the tobacco variety, of course.

a slew of dapper chaps, waiting for the ride to leave waterworks.

a pennyfarthing (also called boneshaker) and a very lovely lady - she won snappiest lass!

imbibing in taney park, where we also played some old-timey games.

a stroll through rittenhouse park - and another tandem.

lois and two of her three beautiful girls.

if you are in the philadelphia area, i encourage you to come! it's definitely not a race, and i promise you that you'll have a blast. bryan and i will be there with as much tweed as we can possibly attach to ourselves.

feel free to visit the website and get more information about the event, and check out the facebook event. please let me know if you decide to come! the ride is this saturday and starts at noon at waterworks - right behind the art museum.