Critical Mass Houston

I went to Critical Mass last night, which was my first-ever group ride. Critical Mass is a monthly group ride, whose nominal aim is to of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists, direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city streets on bikes."

The ride attracted a wide variety of riders, though largely it was the hipster crowd. There was probably 300-400 people. The ride met at Market Square Park downtown and then the organizers decided a path, everyone took off through downtown. If a light at a major intersection is red when the first people approach it, people usually stopped, by they wouldn't stop if it turned red while everyone was going through. Cars waiting would miss their green and some would get mad. One guy kept inching foward until he hit a girl. She was okay but shaken.

As a regular working/family guy training for a triathlon, I found the ride to be unsatisfying and nerve racking.

• Didn't really like the whole blowing through red lights, though with 300+ rides it would be extremely difficult to stop at every light with all of those people. I think this increases cyclist animosity than promotes cycling awareness.
• A lot of riders don't hold any sort of line, and can dart off toward you from the side, or stop quickly in front of you.
• The changes in roads or lanes, combined with the mass of people, their tendancies to swerve, and sudden stops, made me feel like I was constantly in high alert mode while riding to avoid a crash. This was more nerve racking rather than a relaxing social ride. This is made worse by people heavily drinking, whose crashed.
• The area we rode in wasn't the best part of town, it was late at night, and there was a decent chance that drivers were drinking or high.  All-in-all I didn't feel comfortable or safe.
• When we were moving it was slow, about 10mph, so for me it was like: pedal-coast-pedal-coast, so it wasn't really a good workout, although 3 hours on a bike will help my butt get more accustomed to longer rides.
• There were still frequent stops with lots of people, and sometimes it was on a steep uphill, which makes restarting difficult especially given my next issue.
• The final problem was largely my own making. I bought clipless pedals yesterday afternoon. I had planned on putting my platform pedals back on by I ran out of tme. While I did practiced clipping in and out, I was thrown off by quick stops triggered by a sudden stop or a guy on a bmx bike cutting in front of me. If I knew I was stopping, I didn't have an issue, but these surprise stops left me struggling to clip out to avoid a crash. One time my hard leg ejection, caused my chain to come off. By the time I got my chain back on the group was long gone and I was alone in the middle of the ghetto. I managed to link up with one or two other riders, but then it was difficult to catch-up when you hit light after light.... in the ghetto. One of the girls in our straggler pack said "I'm so scared right now". Luckily we followed the right route and met up with the larger group at mid-point stop at Herman Park.

My favorite part of the night (besides the beer at the end) was the trek from the Heights to downtown (and back) with our group of about 8 folks. Seeing downtown at night from the Heights bike trail was really nice. I think I would prefer an organized ride with like-minded road cyclist such as one of the training rides for the MS150.

February route, sort of: It was right at 20 miles, plus our little group's trek in from the Heights and back, which made it to about 28 miles. Our little group veered off towards the end to avoid waiting for the slow moving train.

 We had to wait for a train so here is photo of some of the riders