4.02.2007 — York:

Anoth­er month, anoth­er ride, and this time around we nar­row­ly exceed­ed the pre­vi­ous months atten­dance. How­ev­er, the police made anoth­er brief inter­ven­tion, as two cycle police and an offi­cer on foot joined the ride.

The women PC (on foot) was imme­di­ate­ly very hos­tile, demand­ing that cyclists pro­ceed sin­gle file, essen­tial­ly mak­ing the ride point­less. How­ev­er, they bizarrely van­ished, and the ride fin­ished off more or less in one piece. This did have the effect of encour­ag­ing a few rid­ers to leave ear­ly. There was a bizarre moment where an offi­cer announced into their radio that they’d found the organ­is­er. Iron­i­cal­ly, this was the one reg­u­lar rid­er who’d been much qui­eter than usu­al!

The ride head­ed out through Monkbar and along the last untouched sec­tion of the inner ring: Lord May­or’s Walk. The ride than head­ed past the hos­pi­tal, where the ride had to evac­u­ate the road to allow an ambu­lance through. Over the bridge into the Clifton area, and along Bur­ton Stone Lane, before head­ing out to Clifton Green. Here the ride crossed the riv­er, and head­ed through Lee­man Road, before rid­ing along Rougi­er Street and back across Ouse­bridge.

The next ride will be on 3rd March, when skies will just about still be light when we set off. And look­ing ahead, the first “sum­mer time” ride will be on 6th April, Good Fri­day, when the ride will be adver­tised as fam­i­ly friend­ly (and much eas­i­er to pho­to­graph!!). It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what the police decide to do next: it won’t be sur­pris­ing if they fail to show up until mid­way through yet again. Legal­ly, they have no right to pre­vent the ride, nor to inter­fere with it, oth­er than if the ride stops mid-road or mid-junc­tion. What­ev­er hap­pens, it should be fun non-the-less.

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Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary – St Philip’s Cathe­dral, Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre:

The sec­ond Crit­i­cal Mass cycle ride of 2007 was to cel­e­brate the legal appeal vic­to­ry of Daniel Cad­den who refused to cycle in the gut­ter.
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/01/361089.html

Crit­i­cal Mass has steadi­ly seen increas­ing num­bers of rid­ers tak­ing part. This month almost 30 Birm­ing­ham cyclists met up for a cycle ride around the city cen­tre to high­light the increas­ing pres­ence of cyclists on our streets. The rides are expect­ed to increase the con­scious­ness of oth­er road-users to the safe­ty needs of cyclists as well as demon­strat­ing that cycling is a fun, viable, healthy and envi­ron­men­tal­ly-benign alter­na­tive to infer­nal com­bus­tion pow­ered vehi­cles.

This month’s ride saw the arrival of Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass’ first junior rid­er in the shape of a two-year-old trail­er pas­sen­ger. Through­out the ride she was able to lux­u­ri­ate in her car­riage and enjoy a range of pop­u­lar songs relat­ed to cycling. The ride was also pub­li­cised on the sound sys­tem using a sam­pled voice declar­ing ‘We are Crit­i­cal Mass, come ride with us’.

Next month’s Mass will also be accom­pa­nied by a musi­cal trail­er and it is hoped that peo­ple will sub­mit their favourite tunes before­hand for inclu­sion in a com­pi­la­tion to be played as the ride goes on. This will take place over the Brum Crit­i­cal Mass riseup.net group. Sign up now, sub­mit your tune ideas and come and hear them on 2nd March. The rise­up group has now exceed­ed 50 mem­bers and more are expect­ed fol­low­ing this month’s ride.
Future ride ideas include a ride of suits with bowler hat­ted cyclists Mass­ing through Birmingham’s rush hour and heavy fly­er­ing along busy city cycle routes.

http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass