may critical mass

i rode up to mass with steph, as well as second-years emma and gwen. emma is friends with max, and was in fact riding his fixed gear. (max is currently biking the pch on emma's road bike.) i had a mental block in remembering gwen's name, i suspect since gwen w. can't ride a bike.

i stuck my trash can in my rear basket, along with a "please recycle" sign and a blue bag. the trash can is medium-sized, about knee height. i was initally worried about how much of the basket would be taken up by it, but i had no reason to worry: there was still room for a case.

a photo of my recycling bin was captured here. i'm not in the photo, but you can see the rear view of mah bin. you can also see AndyTheProfessor, a midnight marauder, in his short shorts! look for the pale legs on the far left. he'd just ridden down from evanston, and put on real pants over the bike shorts shortly after he arrived. and before any of us had a chance to make circumcision jokes, too!

still in daley plaza, some guy complimented my recycling bin. i thanked him, and told him to feel free to toss in any recyclables he had. our conversation then went something like this:
he: oh, no thanks, i don't have anything recyclable.
me: would you like one?
he: ...
he: what?
me: um, i was offering you a beer, dude.

and he was shocked. appalled. "you drink while you ride your bike?" i was equally baffled. "is this your first critical mass?" my guess was wrong: he'd been to them in ithaca, portland, and some other northwest city (eugene?); he was attending a chicago cm for the first time, though.

i ended up taking the recycling load back to hyde park from logan square, which made for a noiser ride, but wasn't really a bother. the recycling contained...

1 can budweiser
5 cans bud light
1 bottle corona
8 bottles flying dog
4 bottles groovy brew
1 bottle heineken
1 can heineken
5 cans mgd
1 16-oz can miller high life
1 can miller lite
1 24-oz can miller lite
5 cans old style
1 can pbr
1 16-oz can pbr
1 16-oz can sapporo
6 cans tecate
1 water bottle

for a total of 27 aluminum cans, 14 glass bottles, and 1 plastic bottle.

i'll be thinking about this some more, and likely adding more later, but two things strike me: the large amount of piss beer, and the large number of cans. for real, what's the deal with all the light beer? are these bikers worried about their carb intake or something? i just don't know.

as for cans vs. bottles, cans are obviously a better choice for riding; in the unfortunate event that one falls ("man down!"), you neither spray your fellow riders with glass shards nor endanger your/everyone's tires with broken glass. it may be less conspicuous, also; there were a group of guys drinking tecate, for instance, and i initally thought the red cans they were holding contained coca-cola. very tricky.

i was near todd allen's sound system for most of the ride, which was chill. i didn't see any conflicts or spills, for example. i'm not sure where i was in the mass, which alex wilson estimated at 1500, but i seemed to be closer to the middle and back. i tried, but not too hard, to catch up to the front a few times, but the streets were pretty crowded. typically i just scoot left and breeze by, but the sheer mass! so many bicycles! it was hard to get through. i also slowed down whenever i heard someone say, "hey! recycling girl!" or something to that effect, which made it harder to advance.

i had another anectode, but what what was it. um, i saw deniz and fred and met luke, a guy who's in my linguistics class. deniz was doing a sound recording, after an unpleasant interaction with a cop last month. some guy had a small camcorder duct taped to his headtube; he was filming a bike's-eye-view of the ride. oh! i thought of the story. in a six-way intersection, lincoln-ashland-belmont perhaps, we were (understandably) taking our sweet time. keep in mind i was at least halfway back in the mass, but i am pretty certain the mass didn't zip through as quickly as it could have. there was probably some circling going on, where the first few riders in an intersection, um, well, the term is actually a pretty obvious one, so i'll spare you. some photo evidence shows some chicago hold-ups going down, too. a chicago hold-up slows down the mass in two ways: one, there are obstacles (bikers standing around) that impede the mass's flow; two, passing bikers will sometimes stop to chat with friends who are bike-saluting or, for that matter, corking.

by the time i got to this intersection the hold-ups had ceased, but there was still some general milling around. the mass had made a soft right turn (though as a southsider, i don't know which street we turned onto, or off of). groups of cyclists were corking and talking, either to each other or to drivers who wanted to know what was going on (and likely, when these idiot bikers were going to get out of their way!). it was clear the mass had been there for a while, and cops were starting to get fed up -- nudging us forward, politely enough. one officer, though, didn't quite know what he should say into his loudspeaker. he apparently thought it would be wise to tell us to move along and "let these cars through." oooh, yes, let's let these cars through. why, that should be a new ccm motto!

the map said we were to end at montrose beach; i can only assume that's where we ended. i do know that there were bathrooms, and friends i hadn't seen all ride, and beers finished. there were two after-parties in logan square; i went to one with a big group: justin and martin (who quibbled over the best way to get there), tallbike travis on a rollover bike (you have to see it), elizabeth and richie (two new marauders), steph, andy, malinda, some guys whose name i forget, and perhaps some others. we stopped by a liquor store on fullerton before heading to the party, where alex and margot were. there was vegan food, and dancing/flailing, and good times for all.

may marauders: blues brothers

oh man, this ride was hella fun. w00t.

what what.

i tried to start a respectable blog once. one that wasn't on livejournal or blogspot. one that was open source and sexy. i even got a tight url from the monks of cool; http://bluestreak.monksofcool.org/

you can see the pathetic remains there, for it was not to be. i am insufficiently l33t. so here we are on blogspot, where the easy-ass interface will make it easy-ass to post all these entires that have been sitting around on my hard drive. and some place-holding posts will go in for all those entries that have been sitting around in my head, because maybe i'll eventually type them up.

and the name? well, it's no blue streak. but it's true, lauren bikes! and i'm totally going to tell this blog all about it. just you wait.