Green

There’s the people who are there to protest, and there’s the people who are there to be seen to protest and to cause a little choas. Last night a few of the former and a whole lot of the latter turned out for the Chicago ‘Critical Mass‘ 10th Annual Ride…

While I understand the concept and why these people seek to say that nobody needs a car, I’d like to vent - just a little - on what I think of a lot of cycle-riders in this city… You’re dangerous.

I don’t have a car (you hear that?), I walk almost everywhere in the city and when I don’t (very, very rarely) I will use CTA services. I am very regularly one of those ‘near miss’ pedestrians that you guys get close to hitting when you run a red light or don’t stop at a stop-sign, appear from round the corner of a building or ride on the sidewalk rather than the road.

Sheila and I were by Daley Plaza yesterday when the cyclists were massing, we saw a whole lot of the ‘there to be seen’ protesters - “whoop-ing” and shouting on their way to it from surrounding blocks - and how I chuckled inside when a guy who had been “whoop-ing” and had paid no attention to the fact that there were pedestrians crossing the road (when they had the light to do so) promptly fell off his bike beside me after he’d had to swerve to avoid hitting a woman. After I saw he was OK, I couldn’t help but say to Sheila that “maybe now he’ll shut up.” Maybe he didn’t want to be ’seen’ falling off? Because he - and his friends - weren’t so loud and obnoxious as they rode away.

Still, as much as I find most of the people who do this kind of thing (when they’re in small groups) annoying, it was one hell of spectacle to see the huge train of cycles come thundering by our house. They do have a point - you don’t need a car in this city - infact you can save yourself a huge amount of money not having one! The thing I hope a lot of the full-time cycle rider’s would realize however is that, you don’t need to ride like an idiot on a daily basis.

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Photo by Tim Wheatley.

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Filed under: Main on September 29th, 2007