Critical Mass April 2006
I decided to join John and Chris, my esteemed FeedBurner colleagues, for the April 2006 Critical Mass ride here in Chicago. If you've never heard of it, Critical Mass is a multi-city activist movement to encourage bicycle use as a primary transportation form and demonstrate for cyclists' rights to the road. It's also a great excuse to ogle bike porn. A large group starts out from Daley Center in the heart of the Loop and follows a more-or-less spontaneously chosen route. Largely with police cooperation, the pack (peloton?) overtakes the avenue(s) it chooses, generally jamming up car traffic and "taking back the streets" for an hour or two during the height of the Friday night downtown rush hour.
Needless to say, some people become unpleasant when they can't get where they want to go in their cars.
I shot some roughly-edited video of the event, and our ride within it, in order to give you a sense of what Critical Mass is like in Chicago.
Also, like John and Chris, I plan to build up my own fixed-gear ride based on a Soma Rush track frame and a few dozen parts from one of my all-time favorite bike shops, Rapid Transit in ye olde Bucktown. With Chris' expert help (he helped John get his IRO put together in a snap) I expect to be spinning my way through a few more Critical Masses this summer (if I can make the 14.5 mile ride in to work without becoming throughly disgusting in the process, that is.)