NY Bike Tour Bends to Stupid

This morning I awoke to the news that the NY Bike Tour has banned the use of backpacks, saddlebags and hydration packs from the tour. Why? Boston.

This has to be the stupidest move I have ever seen and reflects the growing knee jerk "we must do something, ANYTHING!" reactions to tragic events. Let me explain a few things:

1) I have done the bike tour 3 times, the last being last year. It is usually cold (upper 30's) at the beginning. Many people, including myself, wear a lot of clothes at the beginning to deal with shit like standing for over an hour at the start line. to deal with shit called "wind chill" when moving at 12-20+ mph. We're usually also carrying food and drink 'cause 50 miles, particularly for those short of Tour De France experience will need to drink and eat something during the tour.

I have two water bottles on my bike and I usually go through both of them before the end.

So these backpacks that people have are often a necessary part of partaking of the tour, particularly as the temperatures rise and clothes are shed. I suppose that folks will be tying their shed clothes around their waists and hope to God their hydration and food they have on the bike and hopefully tucked into their jerseys (if they are wearing one, a lot of people do not) make it.

2) What about all the people along the route? You can't tell people who are NOT a part of the tour to not wear backpacks. We go through many neighborhoods that look much like the finish line of the Boston Marathon. These Bike Tour people do realize it was a roadside bomb that went off right? How exactly does their announcement do anything about the risk of any person on any of the streets the cyclists will be on will not leave a bomb? Oh right. Nothing.

Look. No one is coming to the Bike Tour with a pressure cooker on their back. No one is coming to participate in the Bike Tour to blow anything up unless they plan to go with it. In which case they'll just make the bike a bomb. Think about it. If you have the skills to make a bomb then you have the skills to open a bike frame of a cheap bike and place explosives in it.

Duh.

Anyway. I'm not riding this year and until this stupid rule is lifted, won't be riding in the future. I will not freeze, overheat or starve myself for the stupidity of the folks running the event.