The Liquid Kosmos

Critical Mass - Nashville

The other day when I was riding around town, I noticed a sign taped to a telephone pole that said, "Critical Mass," Friday, 5 p.m. Centennial Park. I knew I had to go.

Last year, when I was in NYC, I was in line ready to rent a bike and join their CM. I was so fired up because I can't think of a cooler place to take over the streets with hundreds of bikers than Manhattan. Barnstorming the busiest streets with colossal buildings peering down and traffic backed up behind us for miles. They always do it on the last Friday of the month and on this day, the rain was too much for the event. It was cancelled.

The following is the definition of Critical Mass plucked from www.times-up.org.

Critical Mass is a monthly celebration of bicycles and other nonpolluting means of transportation, exercising our right to the road. Critical Mass is a movement, not an organization; no two riders participate for exactly the same reason. New York City's first Critical Mass was in 1993.

So, today my friend Billy and I headed over to Centennial Park to meet the other renegades who would join us on our trip down West End Blvd. We searched the park high and low. Spun through two separate times and didn't see one biker. Not one. Well, one girl across the park fixing her chain, but by the time we got over there, she was gone.

We made a decision to take one more loop, and if we didn't find anyone, we would do it ourselves. Two Wisconsin boys tangling the Friday rush hour. And that's exactly what happened.

We left Centennial Park and rode right down West End toward the Lowe's, taking up the right lane as we went. Rebellious, daring, outlandish. Then we turned right on 21st and headed up toward Hillsboro Village shouting, "Move aside, Critical Mass Nashville coming through." I don't think anyone even noticed that we were fighting for biker's rights and making a environmental statement about oil consumption. No one even honked at us. They simply drove around and didn't even seem man.

The whole while Billy was questioning whether or not I had read the sign correctly. I said I'm sure it said 5 o'clock at C.P. and I would prove it when we got to Hillsboro Village.

As we pulled up on the pole where I saw the sign, it looked like it had been ripped down, but thankfully it was on the other side. There is was... and I read it outloud to Billy: "Critical Mass, May 27th, 5 p.m. from Dragon Park to Centennial Park." Oops. Damn, we went the wrong way.

The good news is, the crew was still at Dragon Park and extremely unorganized, so we still had a chance to jump on board with the "real" CM-Nashville crowd- and we did.

The collection of people was not what I had expected. There were far more environmental types than there were bikers. The kind of guys with the really tall bikes and chain wallets dominated the scene, and most of them wore black. For some reason I was expecting to see road messengers, but it looked like most of these bikers picked up their transportation at Goodwill. It was cool though.

We jumped back onto 21st right in front of Jackson's to a few happy screams from the happy hour patrons and headed toward West End. As I mentioned it was a little unorganized and several people didn't notice that we had even left, so we ended up waiting for them in the AmSouth parking lot until we got kicked out by a bank security guard. Can you say rebels??

Back on 21st street and still split into two groups, we cruised through Vanderbilt and a look over the shoulder made it clear that we were causing havoc with drivers. They were backed up for a couple of blocks, two abreast, and I imagined them really pissed off. We had them where we wanted them, going slowly, but then had to take another break to wait for the rest of the people.

Finally, after we were at full strength, we left the dry cleaner parking lot and headed toward the busiest street in Nashville. It was actually pretty cool watching 50 or so bikes take a left turn onto West End during rush hour. I thought for sure the over zealous Nashville cops would make some kind of appearance.

But, as we strolled toward the park, it felt like we were slowly gaining more and more power. I looked back again and saw a cars slowly moving behind our pack with the skyline in the background. It was a very cool view and the drivers seemed unusually patient. I guess that's a Southern thing.

Well, about 30 minutes after we left Dragon Park, we rolled into Centennial with shouts of "Hip, hip, hooray, Nashville." (I think I may have chosen a more rebellious chant, but the girl who just moved back from Portland, Oregon was in charge.)

So, in about an hour and a half, my friend and I completed TWO Critical Mass - Nashville's and since I heard there has only been one other one, that puts us in elite company.

See you there in a month.

posted by The Oscillator @ 4:23 PM