? More about Cycling | Main | To Ellsworth and Back ?
May 27, 2005
The Non-Critical Mass
Tonight I met with a couple of other bicyclists at Kellog Park, by the water fountain at the top of the hill, closest to the Wabasha Street bridge. It’s the last Friday of the month and this is the same time for Critical Mass rides all over the country. There are a couple of reasons I called this ride non-critical. First of all it’s not like the Critical Mass rides I’ve heard of in other places. My intention is not to purposefully block or hinder traffic. My intention is also not to bar hop and get drunk and act crazy. We did mass, and we did ride around St. Paul for about ½ hour, but we rode in traffic on the right hand side, used arm signals and talked and generally had a nice tour of downtown, twice. It’s just not that big of a place, unlike downtown Minneapolis. Another reason I called this Non-Critical Mass, was that it is not designed to make a statement or cause something great to happen. It’s just a good night to get out with some good people and ride around beautiful downtown St. Paul. The connection between people is more important than how the drivers of cars perceive bicyclists. If there were political or other motivations for this ride, then it would most surely fail at it’s mission, because there are many more things that have to be done besides riding around. As bicyclists, if we want to be more visible then we need to get out and ride more all the time. Ride to work, ride to lunch, ride to the grocery store, ride to dinner, ride to our friend’s houses, anytime, all the time. That would have an impact. Getting people used to bikes on the road will take 24 hour per day of bicycles on the road. Most people aren’t willing to do that. But I sure enjoyed this ride tonight. I plan on meeting there every month to do this ride, rain or shine.
What: The Non-Critical Mass ride in St. Paul. It’s not critical you are there, but we’d love to have your company.
When: Last Friday of every month, 4:45 massing time, 5:00pm ride departure time. It goes until we decide we’ve covered enough of downtown.
Where: Kellog Park, by the large water fountain at the top of the hill, closest to Wabasha Street. There are two fountains there. It’s not the one with the walkway through the middle. It’s the other one.
Who: Anyone who loves to ride bicycles and loves to do it with other people. Also anyone who appreciates a nice city like downtown St. Paul. We may discuss ways to improve biking in various parts of downtown as we take our tours. If you are Councilman Dean Zimmerman and you are reading this, we’d love to have you come out and meet with us and ride along. It’s really a great city to tour on bike!
Why: Because we can and want to.
Posted by carl1236 at May 27, 2005 11:14 PM | Attitude