Courteous Mass!

[topaz]

Courteous Mass, originally uploaded by qwrrty.

So I went on the Courteous Mass ride on Friday, and it was a lot of fun! A fellow named Brendan, who was riding a VERY TALL BIKE, did most of the legwork for this initial ride. We gathered in Copley Square between 5:30 and 6pm, and about thirty people started riding around 6:00.

The first ride proceeded according to (what I understand to be) typical Critical Mass principles: the group did not choose a formal leader and didn't ride a set route, but followed whoever happened to be in front. The chief difference was that we agreed informally to obey traffic signals, refrain from corking intersections, and to leave room for cars to pass whenever we could safely do so.

We rode around downtown Boston and the waterfront for about forty-five minutes until the rain started in earnest, when we took shelter under a bridge. When it became clear that the rain would not be letting up, we agreed to go our separate ways. Spirits were very high and just about everyone was enthusiastic about coming back next month.

If I had been organizing the ride I probably would have tried to call for more discipline up front. There were times when riders got pretty careless about spreading out across the road and not making room for faster vehicles to pass. That said, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the leaderless style did work; for example, without any explicit coordination, folks on the ride mostly kept to a single lane on multi-lane roads. So perhaps it's just as well that the first ride was coordinated by a Critical Masser.

Intersections were tricky. If you don't cork the intersections, it's inevitable that a large group of riders will get split up when the light turns red. When that happened on this ride, the riders in front slowed down or stopped at the curb to let the folks behind the light catch up. It seems like the alternative would be to allow the group to split into smaller pelotons (which is easier to do if the group has agreed on a route to begin with). I'm not really sure what the best approach is on a ride like this.

Overall, though, it was a load of fun and I'm only sorry that the rain cut the ride short. I'm looking forward to doing it again in September.