28 April 2023 Critical Mass Ride

 MBC members A.T. Lane and G.T. Bishop joined the monthly Critical Mass ride that starts at The Monument  across from Jeanne Mance Park.  It was the first such ride for A.T. although Mr Bishop had been on the previous month's ride as well.

 

 While they waited for the Mass to assemble, a couple of policemen asked the group who was the organizer of the event.  The answer was always, there is no organizer, simply a group of cyclists who decided to meet at that place and time each month.  During the course of the ride, it became clear that there was an element of truth to that.  Everyone rode at an easy slow pace in a large mass of cyclists.  Those who happened to be at the front when an new intersection was reached decided the direction the Mass would head, straight or to the left or right.  Other riders would block the intersection from car cross traffic until the entire Mass had passed. That way the Mass held together throughout the ride.  Two police cars followed the Mass ride stopping cars from breaking it up from the rear.

  We started off by heading North on Parc.

The ride was quite fun, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

After a while we reached the Trans Canada Highway.

I think we turned South on Papineau.

For a while we traveled West on Sherbrooke.

It all ended with a short talk thanking people for coming out and inviting them to next month's ride.

 It was my first Critical Mass ride in Montreal and I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction to the ride by onlookers along the route and people in cars driving in the opposite direction.  Everyone waved hi or gave thumbs up to the riders.  

 A.T. and Jia, afterwards went to a doughnut shop to discuss a future Sherbrooke based Critical Mass and ideas about the Sherbrooke REV e. poster.