There was a ride that started at 6:30 Sunday evening to an area of the city that has luminary's all around their neighborhoods. Unfortunately in order to get to this part of the city you have to ride through some sketchy neighborhoods. Me, my boyfriend and some new friends I knew from online all met up and planned to ride together. First of all, we just had a considerable amount of snow so the ride started on the bike trail and it was covered in packed snow and solid ice. It was nearly impossible to ride through in places. I was on a mountain bike and still almost bit it numerous times. So then we get to the luminary neighborhood and the snow is like 2 inches deep all through the streets and super slick! I had to get off my bike and walk because there were cars going by us. I'm sliding all over the place so I just did NOT feel comfortable being that close to cars. At this point there are really no ride leaders around and the only people I do know that are associated with the cycling club inform me that they aren't going back to the start of the ride One nice older gentleman offered to ride back to my car with me. We picked up another rider on the way back. This guy and myself had ridden down the bike trail and both were horrified by it. The gentleman that was nice enough to ride back with me wasn't even on the ride. He was out delivering meals to families in need on his bike with a bob-tail trailer. How cool is that, he was the highpoint of my ride I guess my point is that I can't believe this was considered an organized ride. There was no ride leader to be found. There were no maps. No one asked if anyone was new. Like I said, some of the people I knew from online came down to do this ride from another town so they had NO idea where they were in Indianapolis. Fortunately my boyfriend got separated with them and knew the city well enough to get them back. I can't believe he and I got separated. From what we pieced together one of the other riders on the ride was telling people to go and wait at a certain point and then they left and didn't wait??? Keep in mind the areas around this neighborhood we rode to are really bad in parts. I used to commute a lot through Indy but my boyfriend hasn't he was pretty shaken up and my online friends were really upset and angry too. They drove all the way here just to be dropped off in a crappy neighborhood because the weather was so bad they really should have cancelled the ride. This isn't the kind of ride that is supposed to be 'hard core' it's supposed to just be fun. It sooooooo wasn't fun. Ironically I rode with the president of this club for a brief period and we were talking about the cycling clubs in Philadelphia (as many of you know I recently move from Indy to Philly) and I was telling him how nice the clubs were and how organized they were. He was very interested and wondered if they could learn from the Philly clubs. Let me see.... where to begin. As a brand new rider in Philly not once was I EVER left anywhere. A ride leader was always checking on me if they thought I was getting tired. I even had an unexpected mechanical dropped my chain in the middle of a steep intersection. They didn't just keep going, they stopped, and a couple riders came back to help me out. I got the chain back on all was fine but had they just left me like they did in Indy I would have be completely lost! I am so completely disappointed in the Indy club. I don't think I will be going with them again. Super lame and disappointing