Tag Archives: bike

April 2014 Critical Mass 20th anniversary

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mass00If Critical Mass starts every last Friday of the month with the gathering under Waterloo Bridge, then last night it started well before 6pm, with small bunches of cyclists ready to celebrate teh 20th anniversary and already making passers by mystified by such meeting.

The anniversary t-shirts came at around that time, and given out for a donation.

cm03At around 7 the mass started to move to the Waterloo roundabout, on Waterloo bridge and towards the tunnel, which this time was closed off and made for a little slow to start, but this allowed everyone a chance to chat and socialise.

cm01The mass rode through the West End and on to Buckingham Palace, where the mass stopped for the usual mini-party, impressing some bystanders along the way – the following link is a youtube video but the comment is just as worth it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntzsd_ItljI

It seemed the mass was heading to Knightsbridge but it made a U-turn, heading back to the West End, this time Picadilly, where there was yet another U-turn, and on to Trafalgar Square – another mini party.

cm02From there it head West to Battersea Park, with the mass somewhat lowered in numbers, and from there back to Waterloo.

All throughout the ride, some had their phone sharing location for the whole ride, so late-comers could catch up: cm05http://www.glympse.com/!criticalmasslondon how-to

Report on Urban75: http://www.urban75.org/blog/critical-mass-celebrates-its-20th-anniversary-with-a-huge-central-london-ride/

TfL also reported on the ride: twitter TfL

TfLtwit25042014Pictures and maybe video:
http://bambuser.com/v/4566252

Victoria

video: http://youtu.be/L_jWHffIx5E

cm08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY3pvM0lwX0
https://plus.google.com/105941112677430321612/videos
http://connect.garmin.com/group/666216

 

Comments on Twitter …

Video and comment on YT:

cm04http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntzsd_ItljI

I happened to run into this massive gathering cm09of bikers and skaters at Buckingham Palace while I was simply wandering! Turns out it’s the 20th anniversary for a bike ride called Critical Mass. There were COUNTLESS participants. What a wild thing to see!

Some reports and comments from FB:

cm11A great experience overall – thanks everybody
Tonight’s Mass was great!
What a 1 hell of the mass.
Gotta say that was ridiculous fun with some banging tunes to have the mass on another level.
Big thanks to Icame Isawi Steve for making the Mass birthday profile adverts
Loved the party atmosphere despite being slightly damp.
Thought the U turns were chaotically anarchically good humoured awesomeness.
Loved the swarms of people who helped pacify impatient drivers by simply smothering them with quiet passive peaceful numbers.
*most* motorists were quite well behaved, with the occasional exception.

Main thing for next time though; guys at the front, don’t shoot off once you’re through a bottleneck. You need to keep it slow so that no gaps form in the mass, otherwise we just end up spread out and with vehicles able to sneak in.

Thank you London, that was beautiful.

March 2014 Critical Mass reports, pics and videos

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Some thoughts and edited comments from facebook and other sites about the Friday Mass of March 2014.

was rather good fun

Was a good one, nice atmosphere and the best company in London.

Pretty good turn out and a great ride.

Nice ride, surprised by how many riders there were. top notch corking again and very little aggro.

The route on an Interactive map: http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/380699624

A great ride – impressive turn out:

massmarch1

massmarch2

massmarch3

massmarch4

massmarch5

massmarch6

massmarch7

We lost a lot of people after stopping at Trafalgar, then moving down to Buck Palace. kinda petered out after that…

There were a lot of scooters and motorbikes trying to work/barge their way through the mass, more than usual. Possible reasons for this:

– the kingsway tunnel closure meant that the roads nearby were near grid lock so only motorbikes and cycles could get anywhere
– the mass seemed a lot more tightly packed together than usual, think this meant there was less room for safe overtaking by scooter types
– passing through camden we passed a big dominos – at least 4 scooter types were from dominos.

The kingsway tunnel is shut for the next 2 months. Now it’s down to one lane and the traffic is sometimes stacking up all the way down to the hospital!

I find those riding “big bikes” usually better behaved than idiots on scooters and worse still the bloody “pizza delivery boys”

It might be best for CM to take a different start direction next month…

Lovely incident shepherding an ambulance through after the Marylebone tunnel.

Maybe heading out to Blackfriars Bridge and then turning left after crossing to head back towards Strand/Kingsway will be good. Or even the other way with a view to crossing Westminster Bridge?

Guess we’re too many to go along the side of the river to London or Tower bridge, though I believe it’s a cycle route. Could be a celebratory start.

Videos:

More thoughts, audio and mapping of the Friday Mass.

http://onionbagblog.com/2014/03/29/still-we-ride-3/

20th Anniversary T-shirt

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Will you buy one? Feel free to comment.

The 20th london critical mass anniversary is in the 25th of April 2014.

Here’s a suggested design for the 20th anniversary ride. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence at wikia
Feel free to use it.