[CMI-CM] a fun ride and the future

[Zachary C.Miller]

Hey welcome to the 3 new riders that we met on Friday's ride. 

Don't forget that we have a website at: 
http://critical-mass.groogroo.com

We had about 15 people at this month's ride, with half the town down
and out with colds thats pretty good. 

We talked a little bit after the ride about possible things we can do
for the future to build up the ride, here are some ideas:

Put critical mass stickers on _every_ bike lockup post in town. Once
they are there they last for at least a few months. We should
especially focus on teh really high traffic racks at the dorms.

On the day of the ride, have flyering on the quad and at the
dorms. Again focus on high bike traffic areas.

Increase the "festival" atmosphere of the event. We should have music,
bright colors, and lots of fun stuff.

Everyone should come with a sign if possible.

Make silk screened shirts for all the riders. 

Hand out pamphlets to passers by. One idea of mine: if some bike had
some kind of side car or trailer kind of set up then there could be a
person on that bike who jumps out and hands out flyers and then jumps
back on without having to get on and off of a bike.

One of our riders (Cheryl (sorry if the spelling is wrong) rides in
the chicago mass a lot and pointed out some stuff:

Apparently some chicago critical-mass rides go all night and evolve
into bar crawls and socializing as the night gets later.

The chicago rides often have themes like "the gated community tour"
where there is a theme to where the ride goes or "the santa rampage"
where there is a theme to what the riders wear and/or how they act. 

Having "weird" or highly decorated bikes is a common thing at a lot of
masses, also bikes serving novel purposes. 

Some ideas for stunts:

Build a bike propelled trailer capable of towing a drum set or a
guitar player or other musician. This is an old idea that Arun had but
we rehashed it this month with some definite interest in actually
engineering such a beast.

Bring a FM transmitter and broadcast a mobile part that cars can tune
in to. Everyone in the ride brings radios to tune in and create a
decentralized sound system.

Tow a couch on wheels and give pedestrians rides down the street.

Something I thought of just now: sometime on a really nice day when
there are a lot of people on the road and we have a lot of riders,
enter one of the intersections that has the 4 way red light (like
green and wright) and block off the entire intersection and do a
little pro-bike street theater for a few minutes before moving on. We
could get in and out of the intersection safely if we wait for the all
red to enter, perform for one cycle of the lights, and then leave. We
would want to have amplification of some kind and a good interesting
flashy performance so the cars could enjoy it and so we could attract
a lot of pedestrians. 

Anyway I'm just throwing ideas out there. I can't organize all these
kinds of things but I can agitate. Hopefully if you are inspired to do
something like this or something else of your own imaginings then
you'll jump on the list and call for helpers and do it. 

The April ride is the last ride before the students leave. Lets make
it huge and lets cary that momentum into another great Bike Summer. 

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
Write in Alfred Weiss - Green Candidate for Mayor of Urbana 
http://www.prairienet.org/greens/weiss4mayor.htm