. . . and a wish you were here ride for meghan:
I left Critical Mass around 9:20 after it circled in the intersection of 16th and Dolores, and then headed towards the Castro, in the opposite direction I wanted to go. I rode up to 18th, turned left and then right onto Valencia. Lo and behold! Suddenly I was surrounded by bicyclists again! I brought it to someone's attention that this was a breakaway mass and the "main" mass was headed up to the Castro. At first he was surprised and slightly perturbed at not being in the "main" mass, but then fancied the idea of there being numerous breakaway masses. When I broke off from that mass and headed down 24th St., I thought maybe there were a number of masses still roaming the city. In fact, maybe the one I was in wasn't the "main" mass just because it was the first to leave Pac Bell Park. A bigger one could have left after us and headed elsewhere . . .

The media slant on the event was that "Bikes Not Bombs" joined Critical Mass, inflating our numbers and adding an anti-war political slant to it. I didn't know Bikes Not Bombs was an entity, I thought it was just an idea within Crit Mass and SF Bike Coalition. Media slant notwithstanding, turnout was great with estimates at around 1,000 cyclists, far more manageable than last September's Critical Mess 10th Anniversary debacle which attracted 8,000 cyclists from around the country and around the world. With 1,000 cyclists, the mass was able to stick together for most part and move. It was a sight to behold. Traffic tie-up at any one intersection ranged from 30 minutes to 60 minutes! Woohoo, suckers! Seriously, you had to be living under a rock to not have been forewarned that this was happening, and you must have been an idiot to drive in San Francisco knowing this was happening.

The hands-down highlight was the screaming good time in the Broadway Tunnel, where it was also possible to take in the size of the thing. It was jubilant and loud! The mass went screaming and yelling through the west bore, and then doubled back through the east bore completely filling it. The front of the mass waited patiently at the exit of the east bore until the slaggers at the end of the mass had entered the west bore and contributed their share of the screaming.

We then headed to Pac Bell Park, riding just about the entirety of the Embarcadero. The mass generally splinters or ends once it hits Pac Bell Park when there's a baseball game going on. It splintered this time, but I don't know how it happened. We jammed the walkway along McCovey Cove, where Barry Bonds hits his homers, and by the time I got through, there were tons of cyclists behind me, a bunch just milling about, and way down 3rd St. I could see a mass of blinking red lights, followed by a thinly spread trail of them. I didn't wait to see what would happen at Pac Bell and chased.