Man, that was a scary ride. I had never done it before, and was planning on keeping a nice even pace -- I knew it wasn't going to be a brisk workout. But between the very inexperienced riders who would come to a complete stop in the middle of the road to take a picture, and the obnoxious "roadies" who were weaving through the crowd way too fast, I constantly felt like I was about to get hit. In fact, someone went down directly in front of me (she was OK, aside from a few bruises -- I waited with her until she could get out of the road).
I don't understand the people trying to "race" this ride... some guy on a swanky carbon bike actually angled in front of me when we were bottlenecked, going about 2 mph and crossing nearly parallel tracks. And then there were the people with kids on tagalongs who slowed to a crawl on the St. John's bridge approach, and started weaving back and forth, trying to switchback their way up, rather than just pulling over to the right.
I'm really glad there are events like BridgePedal that get all kinds of inexperienced cyclists out and on their bikes (even if most of them drove to the event!). I just think I'll steer clear of events like that from now on!