Critical Mass Today!

Come and ride with us in Critical Mass tonight!

Here's what my roommate wrote about it:

Today is the last Friday of the month, so it's time for Critical Mass, the anarchic bike rally ride madness thing you either know and love or are hearing about for the first time just now. Either way, you should all come. The weather is going to be great (it's supposed to hit 48 tomorrow), so there should be a good crowd. Summer and fall rides draw thousands of people, I expect this will be a couple hundred.

The way this thing works is everybody meets at Daley Plaza downtown at 5:30, and then once people get tired of standing around we launch off as a group and tool around town en masse, as it were, according to some not-always-predefined plan. January is traditionally the polka ride in chicago, so the end goal is some bowling alley in Lincoln square where a group galled The Polkaholics is playing, but since Lincoln square is a little farther than I want to ride to listen to polka and bowl even under ideal conditions (i.e. no bike ride home), we will probably splinter off and head home once things start to drift north. Also, the ride is going to stop briefly to install a ghost bike at the site where a guy who was well known in local bike circles was killed earlier this month, so those of you interested in death, commemoration, ritual, and all that stuff can write this one off as a business expense.

If we all leave together from Hyde Park we'd probably want to meet at 4:30 or so. This is by no means an athletic event. The ride tends to move at a pretty slow pace; there are generally people towing trailers with things like stereos and kegs, and nobody's going to let them fall behind. It's also very safe, as we travel in a huge group and block traffic at intersections. We'll take the lake front path up and back, so that ! will be plenty safe as well (and very nice going up at sunset). I don't know who does and does not have bikes, but we have some extras here and we can probably scrounge up more. Also, if anybody has a bike but it's been chained to a lamp post since september and you're not sure if it runs, let me know and I can take a look at it.