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With the great weather yesterday bikes were out in force here in RI. I happened to be downtown in Providence last night for dinner & drinks and while traversing the city between 2 locations we ran into 3 groups of dirt bikes ripping thru the city. For you city dwellers i'm sure this is a common site, but this was my 1st run in with dirt bikes in the city and I must say it was an odd experience .
First off they were all true dirt bikes, so no lights at all, very weird (and hard) to see. Also most of them were 2-strokes , ranging from a few RM/KX 80s to multiple KX/YZ/CR 125 & 250s, screaming loud. The weirdness continued with the bizarre fact they all seemed to be obeying the traffic signals, stopping at red lights, which I didn't really see the point of. mostly helmetless, several had backpacks. Woolies galore, hoping onto sidewalks at times, reversing direction and circling randomly.
Perhaps the oddest sight was when I pulled into a gas station located in the middle of a round-about / 6 way intersection. There was a Providence officer getting gas & a gatorade and while we were both at the gas pumps a group of 6 dirt bikes came around the round-about, stopped at the intersection, 2 circled up onto the sidewalk, then green light and they all took off with a few wheelie-ing away from the light. The cop seemed extremely uninterested, as in he payed nearly no attention to the bikers as he threw out some trash from his car and slowly got situated to pull away in the opposite direction as if he didn't hear them.
Of course there were also the mandatory LEDed extended swingarm crew, they seemed tame in comparison