ride critical mass

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!

So, the traffic solidified outside of downtown. I gave up on the streets, and rode on the sidewalk. I could hear helicopters overhead. As I came over the top of 4th Ave, I could see the red and blue blinkies of the police cruisers.

I thought, oh shit, on Black Friday, the biggest retail shopping day of the year, there’s been some sort of bomb threat to the Westlake Center, and they’ve cordoned off downtown.

Well, as I got closer, it became clear that was not the case. Instead, the area was closed to MV traffic for some big Macy’s “holiday” event. Hordes of pedestrians were standing around Westlake Center. I arrived pretty much in time for the fireworks display at 5:30. I like fireworks, so that was pretty neat.

Some of the cyclists were bitching about all the people walking around, and when I said, “pedestrians are traffic too” I got a few hostile stares. Anyway, all the people finally dispersed, and we rode around downtown.

It was just like the first few miles of STP. A huge army of bikes, several lanes wide, riding around.

After going up to Belltown, and then all the way down through Pioneer Square, down to Safeco field, we started heading back up. I decided to peel off and head back up Dearborn with my friend Dane. I stopped by his house for a bit, and warmed up my toes, and then took off for home.

Was it worth it? It was OK. It wasn’t like it was a freak show, or filled with unruly miscreants, like some would have you think. Some people drank beer beforehand, but some had hot lemonade, too.

It’d be affirming, if you’d never ridden with a lot of other bikes before. And all those blinkies ahead of me, chaotically blinking to their own rhythm, looked pretty cool. But it wasn’t a radical experience, one way or the other, that some people would have had me believe it to be.