Critical Massive

I have read a book on cycling that is quite interesting Two Wheels by Matt Seaton of The Guardian. Basically it is a load of his columns made in the last 4 years organised into chapters that talk about like minded things. The 1st chapter includes a topic called Critical Mass, to anyone who is not a cycling enthusiast it is not the inclination to judge severely and find fault in the public celebration of the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church. However it is a way (on the last Friday of the month)to increase the awareness of bicycles on the road by cycling in a group slowly taking up the whole road.

All day at work I was excited that I could make tonight's Critical Mass. My hours had changed this week and I had a 4pm finish on a Friday which meant for the 1st time I could participate. Now with any type of protest movement you could probably get arrested depending on how militant it is, however the cycling variety is more of a an "organized coincidence", with no leadership or membership. This meant there is unlikely to be any trouble. However I just remembered coming up to lunch I had to get measured at a suit shop for a friend's wedding by tomorrow as he would be picking up the measurements in their Reading shop. I could go after work, but this would mean I would miss the cycle, I went in my lunch break, did this now mean it had become pre-meditated me turning up Friday night in Bristol City centre? If we did get arrested I could no longer swear under oath that I hadn't decided to turn up, as the measurements in my pocket suggested otherwise.

5.40pm I turned up at the fountains with around 25 other cyclists. There seemed to be two main people that had been a lot of times before (see I am already trying to shift blame if we got clocked on CCTV as protesters) who at just after 6pm started the procession. We cycled all around Bristol City centre blocking roads with cars and buses in tow. It was a great experience and for once made me feel as a cyclist I was the majority and not a piece of metal with cars whizzing past. Apologies by the way if you are reading this and drive a black BMW or the two chavs in the blue Fiesta as your journey tonight probably took a little longer than anticipated. It was great community spirit with some cyclists stopping at junctions to ensure cars didn't get in between the group(corking).

After 50 minutes of cycling it had finished, brilliant fun ending up in the Full Moon bar in Stokes Croft. I had a pint, just the one as I do not condone drink driving in any form.

[Right I know I have gone on a few tangents in today's entry but I have just had a Windows 7 moments. I didn't know how to spell condone, so I used a search engine to find out and a whole load of pages came up about something else. So I deleted my history!]

I sat about with a few other cyclists discussing how the ride went and then the conversation went to other things I found out a few interesting facts. Elephants and Whales are related, they are the only creatures where their nostrils are higher than their eyes. You are more likely to be bitten by a human in new york than bitten by a shark. (Can't really remember the actual stat but 1,200 humans are bitten by other humans in NYC each year I think). The best one though was the 3 Door Game show probability, known as the Monty Hall problem, We had a 15 minute debate about it, brilliant.

Thanks
Louis