Chicago Critical Mass

For some reason, I forgot, then remembered, that the last Friday of each month is the customary Critical Mass ride day. Being in ChicagoLand, I figured there'd be a Chicago Critical Mass (CCM) ride downtown, and there was. Of course, how is it that I never picked up on the fact that there's a ride in Ann Arbor too?

Aaannnyway... so I figure I have time on my hands and haven't seen Millenium Park yet, so I grab my bike and sundries and ride on into town. Somehow, someway, the City of Chicago has managed to do some good things about improving life for cyclists - bike lanes on major streets, indoor downtown parking (with showers and lockers and a mechanic on site!), etc. Shameless plug: Chicagoland Bicycling Federation puts out a really good map (for about $5-7) with street conditions/bike lanes indicated, going from downtown, out 40-50 from the lake, north and south.

So I ride into town, see the Park, and The Bean (and other pic) which, depending on your opinion of public art, is either really interesting, or it's a "hunh?" moment. The bridge is pretty nifty too:
There was a weird ground-level fog coming off the lake, but with bright sunshine, and so the effect was pretty interesting with the sunlight bouncing off the windows into the fog - almost like a daytime searchlight:
And then I continue to hang out downtown in The Big City, reading in the parks, walking around, stopping at the Chicago Public Library Harold Washington Library Center to check out the beautiful, red granite, mega-huge library. (if we, as a people or society, are going to build monuments to celebrate or preserve a thing, a library is a pretty damn good choice). It's a really great building (in my opinion), and it you're ever downtown Chicago, consider driving or walking by. Hell, why not go in? It's awfully nifty on the inside as well.

So then comes time for the CCM ride and I show up at Daley Plaza around 5:30. People start trickling in, and keep trickling, people who know each other greeting each other, people showing up on wacky bikes kinda like thisone, young people, old people, every kind you can think of. And so sometime around 6:00, there's a collective rustling and jostling, cyclists start riding out around the plaza in a loop until everyone is out of the plaza and on the street, and then it heads off on the route.

It's a super-slow speed ride so that everyone can keep up and stayed bunched up ("massed up" in masser-speak). Though the premise - taking over whole lanes of pavement as form of "we are here" activism - can be seen as antagonistic, it's really quite friendly. Obviously, there are some motorists who were aggravated when this group of 1000+ (yes, that's thousands) cyclists all going the same route blocked up traffic while the whole group passed, but on the whole, I saw a lot of smiles "out there" on the sidewalks and on coming and stopped traffic.

It seemed like the group got larger and large as the ride progressed. Every time I looked, I was amazed at how many people there were. And when the ride stopped every now and then to keep from stretching out too far, I took some pictures. In the two pics below (click for larger versions), the first one is as I'm riding along, approaching a stopping point. All those people up on the bridge are cyclists. I get up to the group, turn around, and take another picture. I really can't tell how far it went back, but it was at least 6-8 blocks. You tell me - how many people are there? Gotta be at least a thousand.

I'm normally pretty dismissive of people who talk of events as "feeling the energy of the moment", but it was hard to deny the feeling of camaraderie with 1000 people I never met before. The welcome of the smiles from the people on the streets and in the houses we passed, the surprising number of inconvenienced/blocked drivers who, initially dour, couldn't help but smile or honk in greeting after a few hundred people riding by wave at them.

Damn, but if it wasn't a heck of an experience. If I lived in ChicagoLand, I would do it every month. I'll be looking for rides in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area too (or wherever I am at the end of the month)