ride critical mass

I’m going to ride my bike to work for the first time and go to this, I work close to the starting point, hopefully I’m in good enough riding shape to make it the whole way.

Friday June 27… from the site: “Critical Mass is a celebration of bicycling as a pollution-free mode of transportation. Critical Mass is not an organization nor it is affiliated with any organization, it’s an unorganized coincidence. It’s a movement … of bicycles, in the streets.”

Well, I finally lost my Critical Mass virginity last night. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and cycling in a group like that felt really great and comforting. One of the highlights was cycling up the necropolis and taking in a magnificent view of the city. We were also joined by a longboarder for a considerable stretch. :D

Definitely, definitely am doing it again.

There’s been some talk lately about organizing an event that has been termed, “Critical Manners”.

Here, when people ride Critical Mass, the attitude of the local police is, “if we don’t bug them, they’ll get through it very fast, and it won’t gum up traffic for long”. Meanwhile, participants ride in a way, typically through illegal actions, that channel as many bikes as possible on downtown streets, with the end product being so it ends up taking as little time as possible, even if that’s not the intent.

Critical Mass has taken criticism because the bikes do take over the streets. But one of the things that gets singled out is that they do so in part by acting illegally: corking intersections, riding several abreast, and so forth.

So, what if a Critical Manners event existed in our city? What if would involve as many bikes as Critical Mass, but everyone would ride as the law both allows and requires. In other words, single file, positioned safely (typically, in the equivalent of the right or left wheel well, depending on the street), coming to a complete stop at stop signs, not passing cars on the right, and so forth. It would take probably ten times longer than the usual Critical Mass, and would gum up traffic ten times worse.

I’m not sure what the aim is. One might be to promote vehicular cycling. Another might be: make those motorists pay for complaining about how bicyclists are a bunch of scofflaws, and make them wish they’d be a little bit more disobedient.

some years ago. I recall that there was an incident with a taxi driver and one of the other cyclists. This was in Edinburgh.

Rode CM in Norfolk, however I have yet to do it in Richmond.

I have come close to doing this. Every Tuesday in Philly they have this thing called the pretzel ride where a group of people meet at the rocky stairs before midnight and bike to this pretzel shop that distributes pretzels to stands all over Philly. The shop opens at midnight. Similar to the critical mass but the time and route are not as spontaneous.

Critical mass is the best use of a Friday night ever.

and it was awesome! All the bikers were in a good mood, and we got to raise biking awareness (aka piss off a bunch of car drivers!) I can’t wait until next month!

Critical Mass rides in Dallas are less than massive, more like a “Pub Ride”. Maybe I need to head to NYC!