Of Dirty Fingers and holy water: Sunday riders receive blessing of the bicycles

“For a lot of us it’s the start of the race season. I had the idea of having a blessing of the bikes, because we’re all out there on the roads and putting ourselves out here,” said cyclist and videographer Manny Marquez, who arranged for Father Saul to come to Dirty Fingers. “I know not all of you are Catholic, but it’s still a nice thing.”

In a first for the priest, he read a blessing and said a prayer for the bicycles and their riders, then applied holy water to the group’s bikes as they recited the Lord’s Prayer. He worked his visit in between two Mass services that morning.

“This is the first time for me, but in my life I have seen bad things happen to cyclists,” Father Saul said. “We pray to God for you in your activities and ask that he will take care of you as you are doing these nice things,” Father Saul prayed. “Keep them safe from harm, and instill in them respect for each other.”

The group posed for a photo with Father Saul and then headed east for a ride they hoped would avoid the rain.

Shop owner Mitchell Buck said the bicycle blessing was a perfect connection to the shop’s screening that afternoon of the Milan-San Remo race, the longest single-day cycling race in the world. Its route passes by the basilica of Madonna del Ghisallo and is a hallowed event for cyclists all over the world, Buck said. The event was the first in Dirty Fingers’ Classics Series screenings at the shop.

Each year to start the series Buck cooks up a feast for his friends: this year, he tried grilled pizza for the first time, with the help of cycling maven Bob Camillucci.

On Buck’s quotable blackboard are Paul Cornish’s words “Bicycles have no walls,” and the riding advice: “You don’t have to go fast, you just have to go.”