Critical Mass Bicycle Ride in Norman, Oklahoma
Last Friday of Every Month
6:00pm Starting from Buchanan Bicycles on Campus Corner
This Facebook group may have up-to-date info:
Critical Mass Norman - www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41585618940
Critical Mass bicycle rides happen in cities all over the world, usually on the last Friday of the month, usually during evening rush hour. There's no organization to join, there's no one in charge, it just happens. The CM rides started in 1992 in San Francisco, where some rides have had over 5,000 riders. The purposes and flavor of the rides may vary quite a bit from city to city. Mainly the purpose is to promote awareness of bicycles (specifically that they can and should be ridden on city streets) and to have a big fun safe ride.
Critical Mass rides have happened on and off for many years in Norman, maybe since 1998, pretty steadily (though with varying attendance) since at least 2004. I showed up pretty much every month since my first ride on New Years Eve 2004. I finally gave up after April 2009, too heartbreaking for me to see the total lack of interest in Norman. Too many times it was just me or just 2 or 3 of us. So I hope someone else will decide to get this going here. I would love to be able to show up and ride from time to time. But it needs to reach some kind of "critical mass" to take off. Plus I find that I often need to work late on Fridays, or might rather go to yoga class, and then there's the library booksales that seem to conflict once or twice a year, and I guess I'm really more of a walker anyway. So see, everyone has their excuses. I have always thought that the ride could be very successful here, and that the key is just getting the word out.
There's tons of Critical Mass info on the web. A couple of sites to start with:
TedWhiteGreenLight.com
Home of We Are Traffic documentary.
This page revised 08/09/09. First Posted 01/04/05