This weekend marked Arlington’s first ever Zombie Bike ride.

I really get a kick out of these themed group rides. The underwear ride in Denton turned out to be a huge success because of the novelty accompanying riding around in underwear. Well, dressing like a zombie has the same appeal.

We had about 20 people in all but a handful were decked out in the Zombie decor. Some regulars from the Ladies Ride, the Buffalo Ride and the Sunday ride came out, but we also had lots of new people, probably because of the theme. Zombies ranged from some smeared-on face paint to realistic flesh wounds and blood-oozing gums.

Preparing for the zombie roll proved challenging on its own. I got one of those fake flesh wounds at the grocery store, which never ends up looking like the picture on the box.

Luckily, I had some leftover makeup from the Dallas Zombie Crawl last year. The basic zombie get-up is actually a lot easier than it sounds. Just glop on some white, then gray makeup, add some blood, and you’re good to go. (I watched a Youtube video about making the bruises and rotting flesh look realistic with makeup blending techniques, but I bit the bullet on that and decided 30 minutes was not enough time for Hollywood level makeup.)

I used a little corn starch to keep it on — sweaty bike-riding and costume makeup can be a bad combo. Lastly, the more fake blood the better. Standing around getting ready to start the ride, several cyclists bit down on those blood capsules to add to their bloody ooze.

We started the ride pretty close to on time, which rarely happens, because we wanted to ride through the sports crowds. Sunday night, both the Cowboys and Rangers had home games. So we knew there would be lots of people.

There were a few concerns about the traffic, but it ended up being pretty unnoticeable. By the time we got to the stadium, most people who were driving to the game were already there. I mean, who shows up on time — much less late — to a World Series game?!

We rode around “terrorizing” the common folk. Demanding their brains and making awesome grunting noises.

We got some great reactions. Some people walking away from Cowboys Stadium gave us confused looks. Some people had to do a double take. Lots of people cheered either for the sports teams or for zombies. The pedicab drivers around the ballpark really seemed to like us. Huge grins and excited bells or horns greeted us each time we saw a one.

The most exciting part of the ride was probably when we picked up two new cyclists! They’d never heard of Bike Friendly Arlington or any of the community rides in Arlington, but they loved our zombie costumes! So, I whipped out the spoke cards I talked about last week and gave it to them like it was a business card. They said they’d look up the contact info and that we’d see them next Sunday!

I think that’s why community rides are so important. That’s why it’s good to do high-profile rides going where there’s lots of people, and that’s why it helps to have costumes and act a little goofy.