What you do as an individual matters collectively...

Ok guys, we get it. Critical Mass is fun. You get to take the streets, bend (and sometimes break) the rules, ride as a pack, all sorts of cool shit. There are no leaders, no organization, no planned route, it's an excellent time and wholly unique as far as ride structure goes. But there's a downside to all this freedom. Sometimes people at the front get a little overenthusiastic and things like this happen:

1-29-10 5:53pm ( Riverside / Congress)

Date: 2010-01-30, 9:49AM CST
Reply to: sale-nhcxg-1577767455@craigslist.org

To those who were riding out front yesterday in the large group that was at Riverside & Congress:

As I sat at the light waiting for the green arrow to allow me turn left onto Riverside from Congress, I was bemused to see your group arrive. I wish I could've been with you guys on my cruiser. Alas the 9-5 grind. So much was I amused and delighted to see you guys I took a picture!

As I waited patiently for those in front that had come to a stop ahead of the stop line and were in the intersection impeding the flow of traffic, and those that had started to go BEFORE THEIR LIGHT TURNED GREEN, I held up some rather impatient drivers. Notably the one who nearly rear ended me & my 3 MONTH OLD DAUGHTER in the back seat, because I had to SLAM on my breaks to avoid hitting some guy, who for whatever reason decided he wanted to get to the front of the group by crossing the double yellow INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC.

I really hope everyone who witnessed this enjoyed their laugh at my near accident. I also hope that the guy who I nearly hit was thankful that my breaks didn't fail to stop me in time to save him a trip to the ER. I was thankful the guy's in the black SUV's worked as well.

I was near the front of the pack at the time so I got to witness this bullshit first-hand. We had people snaking around into the oncoming lanes while traffic was pouring through, jamming everything in the on-coming lane up. I'm all for keeping the mass rolling if the light turns red on us as we're passing through, but jumping out into an intersection against traffic with the cars pressing down is fucking stupid, and only pisses off the very people that we have to share the road with 365 days a year.

Yes y'all, you CAN ride in the front, sprint ahead, push the pace, jump lights, piss off cars, act like a jackass, but WHY? We're not in a hurry to get anywhere. They don't give out medals at the end of the ride. There's no cash (or otherwise) prize at the final destination. You don't get to pick what's behind Door #3. So what the fuck is the big deal with speeding around and jumping red lights? Chill the fuck out a bit y'all.

Thing have been going pretty good for us, cop-wise, so why fuck that up? It's that kind of bullshit behavior that's going to get the cops on our asses. According to this story about Friday's ride, la policia only come after us if they see us doing shit OR get reports being phoned in about our activities. All I'm asking is PLEASE for the sake of the rest of us who have to deal with traffic every single day on our bikes if you're going to go out of your way to piss off cars do it on your own fucking time, assholes. Better yet, don't do it at all. There's no need for that shit.