My Last Critical Mass

I forgot to bring my camera. Pity, because the endpoint was the best I’ve been to. Montrose Harbour. Lots of space, and people were dancing to the music from the trailer-boomboxes on the grass, with the tinny flashing ferris wheel of Navy Pier and the pink-lighted Hancock and Sears towers on the horizon.

Critical Mass is a street party on two wheels, but without all that artificial stuff people do at parties to have fun: there the fun is had by simply pedalling. The most primitive of enjoyments: endorphins from physical movement.

I wasn’t sure if I should leave the after-party at Montrose Harbour. I liked the atmosphere and the scenery, but I wasn’t completely enjoying it because of the ache knowing it was my last time at such an occasion. If anything was bittersweet, that was it. When I’d agonised over it to the point where I was about to blub, I decided to leave. Pedalling against the wind was, as usual, sufficiently distracting that I didn’t blub on the way back. Too exhausted when I reached home to blub either.

The lake was stunning, etc.

I will not meet such a wonderfully crazy group of people in Singapore. I will miss them.

I will try to start one, but I am not optimistic.

Mastering the Alley Pee

One of my biggest missed photo opportunities in the last Critical Mass was to take a shot of the line of male cyclists lining up to pee against a fence in the south side (I think this was somewhere along King Dr, or close to it anyway). After the mass, there was a discussion on the listhost of how to deal with the need to pee. Someone suggested that rather than stink up alleys with pee, to do it between parked cars instead. This prompted the following suggestion:

The Kneel Technique

Back in the day a friend and I developed the kneel technique for males urinating outdoors in conspicuous places with autos around. (This may satisfy an additional urge for those on this list.) One lowers themselves next to a car tire, the inside knee on the ground and the outside leg with
the foot on the ground and bent at the knee–assuming a posture as though one were inspecting the tire (“inspecting tire” thoughts help the scenario). Be mindful of the slope of the ground and let nature run its course from there.

Update: A masser sent a link to the following photo:

Chicago Critical Mass April 2007

The route was several loops within downtown, then southwest to Pilsen via UIC, southeast to US Cellular Field, southeast still to Promontory Point. First Critical Mass that ended anywhere near my house! I was pretty knackered towards the end, still. Barely lingered at the Point before heading home to pacify my growling stomach.

The tourists on Michigan Ave seemed to be a more accommodating crowd than before. Lots of children who were simply delighted to see a change in scenery, including one who noticed my pillow and was verily amused.

I was asked several times if I was involved in the pillow fight. In response to an email to the listhost that demanded “Bring a pillow tonight…or you might regret it!!!!”, I brought my pillow along and strapped it to my front rack as follows:

A couple of people were puzzled by the pillow and asked me what it was for. I did see a few others with pillows around, though:

Near the Sox stadium the traffic police went wild with the Massers cheering for the Sox. The people in the South Side were generally much more excited and positive about seeing a bunch of cyclists clogging up their roads than the people one encounters on the North side and downtown.

I spotted at least three unpleasant confrontations with motorists; which is significantly more than usual. A function, I think, of having a route that spent too much time downtown, where heavy, impatient traffic abounds. One particularly bad one involved a driver who was reversing into cyclists in order to get out from behind another car. Someone opened his right door to confront him, and he got out of his car. Everyone thought he was going to turn violent, but all he did was to shut the door and get back in, while shouting something about how he had to get somewhere for some reason. All the while, a masser had been yelling at the cyclists using themselves as barricades to stop the car from moving to let him out, but no one listened. Because of that hold-up, the mass was split into two. I found myself near the front of the second half of the mass. Now the mass began to thin out dangerously as people at the front sped up to try to catch up with the front of the main mass. The masser who had been yelling at the cyclists to let the driver out pedalled like crazy to get to the front of the delayed part of the mass. Eventually we reached a corked intersection where he managed to persuade the corkers to let the traffic go while we massed up. Shortly after we caught up with the main mass.

The full set of half-decent photos is here.

Shipping Issue Resolved

I have ordered a Ground Effect Tardis Bag to transport my bike back to Singapore. I figure it gives me a good chance of escaping the $80 bicycle fee that many airlines charge (I’m flying United), it’ll make it much easier for me to get to the airport, even on the CTA, and I can reuse it for future trips. At $132 including shipping, it’s a lot cheaper than other bike bags, and should more than compensate for multiple $80 surcharges. Packing clothes into the bag until it’s completely stuffed up should also compensate for the lack of padding.

I had earlier been worried about having to carry my bike on the CTA close to rush hour (my flight is at noon), in addition to other luggage, and further having to overcome my phone phobia to ask UA in advance if they can provide bike boxes. That shouldn’t be an issue now.

Still avoiding the outdoors, and hence avoiding my bike. Been swimming almost everyday instead, and my right ear has been blocked since yesterday. Annoying.

I actually biked more during the dead of winter. I’m much more demoralised about winter now because it keeps looking as though it might actually end, but doesn’t. Since mid-March, we’ve gotten scattered days with >10C weather, but then we plunge back to near freezing again. And it’s bloody windy. The thought that winter shouldbe ending makes it more demoralising when it doesn’t. Easy to go out cycling in sub-zero weather if you think it’ll be over soon. Not when you’ve had weeks of evidence that it is, in fact, not ending anytime soon.

It’s not even cold in an interesting way. I’d rather it be sub-zero and snowing than slightly above zero and blustery and gray and damp, like the middle of a English winter. English winters are Chicago springs, I suppose. Horrible thing to inflict on us just when we are expecting and hoping for warmth.

If next week is this cold I’ll miss my second Critical Mass in a row. I’ve never been so fed up with coldness.

Sick of Winter

All I did today was to sleep too much (12 hours — midnight to noon), spend 3 hours in the “lab”, swim for an hour, wander around Hyde Park for another hour, including a stop at my favourite bookstore where as usual I fell to the temptation to buy another book despite already having a mountain of the damn things that I haven’t read, go home, and eat dinner. The result: exhaustion (physical and mental), a headache, and one blocked ear (meaning I can’t listen to music). I miss cycling, but I’m so sick of winter that I don’t want to go out more than necessary (which is why I’ve taken up swimming again). The weekend weather forecast, sadly, probably means that I won’t be out cycling anytime soon. 7° C | 1° C on Saturday, 9° C | 2° C on Sunday. With 40% chance of rain/snow on Saturday and 30% chance of rain on Sunday. On Wednesday I woke up to see the scenery outside the window dusted with white. It was fecking sleeting, in the second week of April. Yesterday was gray and wet (though not sleet, at least). Today was warm around midday but cool soon afterwards.

And when May swings by, when it finally gets warm, we’ll have the privilege of the company of the 17-year cicadas.

In my three winters here, this is the first time I’ve felt sick of winter. Previously, I was annoyed that the weather was making outdoor activities rather unpleasant. But it’s really getting to me this time. I just want to go out and spin in the wide open spaces of the lakefront path without having to put up with a vicious windchill or precipitation or numb toes. Please.

Strange

I am not going for Critical Mass today.

Surprised myself with that, really. Even geared up to go, but when it was time to leave, I just couldn’t persuade my sleep-deprived brain to be enthusiastic about it. It’s all Kant’s fault. And if that paper wins $1000 I will puke. It may even be worse than the original version.

I will have only two more Critical Masses to go to.

Awaiting Spring

Yesterday, it hailed.