Critical Mass
Critical Mass is a monthly bike ride where hundreds of cyclists take over the streets of Vancouver for an evening ride. This month's ride was a little different. Someone counted that over 1800 bikers turned up for a 2.5 hour long ride that took us over 5 bridges, all through downtown, down Hastings, and finally ending over at Kits beach for the sunset.
I've heard of Critical Mass many times before, but never gone and always wanted to. So finally I got myself organized and showed up with Greta, Mike, Ralph, and British Mike. The event completely exceeded all of my expectations....it was massive and loads of fun! It was so much fun I think I may just go the the July ride too!....
http://vancouvercm.blogspot.com/
The ride started at the Art Gallery downtown at 6:00pm. The entire city block was packed with cyclists:
We then rode through downtown and over the Granville street bridge:
The mass then continued to take over streets and briges. Next was Cambie:
Then we crossed the Georgia Viaduct and completely clogged up Hastings Street for kilometers:
We suffered one flat tire, and after about 10 minutes the group finally passed us. We caught up around Howe street, and then the group split near Denman. Half went to English bay, and the other half went up to Lions Gate bridge. There was no way we were going to miss the bridge!
Cycling through Stanley Park:
The mass then took over the ENTIRE bridge! All 3 lanes were blocked with over 1000 cyclists for over 15 minutes, it was awesome. I'm sure some drivers were pretty pissed off though:p
There's this strange thing that everyone does at at the top of bridges and that is raise your bike above your head, so of course we had to participate!
After riding back through the park and across downtown, the group headed over the 5th bridge, Burrard, and over to Kits beach for the sunset:
Posted by Evan at 11:59 PM
