Ride Civil in Ten Days
After the Critical Mass debacle last week, I spent a lot of time reading, thinking, and writing about what went wrong and what I might have been able to do to prevent it. One of the more interesting things I read about was a Critical Mass counterpoint ride that stressed legality while taking over the streets. It has been called various things, from “Courteous Mass” and “Civil Mass” to “Critical Manners.”
It just turns out that there is such a ride in Seattle, and it’s called “Ride Civil.” Not quite as catchy as what we came up with at Amazon before we heard about Ride Civil (C3M2R, see below), but it gets the point across. Ride Civil happens on the second Friday of every month, meeting at Westlake Center at 5:30.
For me, this is mostly an experiment. What will it be like riding with a group (who knows how large?) through an urban environment with lots of traffic, while following all of the rules, and even being extraordinarily courteous to our two-ton brethren? For this ride, I’m even going to wear my helmet. Yuck.
I’ll let you know how it goes.