Leap Year Mass

I want to start out by apologizing profusely for not mentioning Critical Mass last Friday. Despite being excited for it all day, I forgot to mention on this blog. I’m sorry.

[For those of you who don’t know what Critical Mass is, check Wikipedia, they have a good write up there.]

Leap Year Mass last Friday was a great time. The announced count was 475 riders and my mileage calculation was around 35 miles (which is pretty long for Mass). I, of course, did not have my camera this month, but promise that I will post at least pictures if not video of March’s event.

At some point I hope to figure out how to give the route graphically, possibly through Google Maps, but for the time being, the following word description will have to do:

This years event, as usual, began at the fountain in Balboa Park and we started out heading west across The Prado. We then headed south into the Gaslamp Quarter and then out along Harbor to Ocean Beach. From there we went north to Mission Beach and took the boardwalk to Pacific Beach. From there we headed down Garnet Ave through the bar district and to the east shore of Mission Bay. Followed that back to Pacific Coast Highway which took us back downtown.

All in all a pretty good Mass. I witness very little hooliganism and there seemed to be only a few crashes. The vehicular traffic was unobtrusive and there was no police action.

For those of you interested in attending future Critical Masses, the meeting point is the fountain in Balboa Park in between the Natural History Museum and the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center; on the last Friday of each month at 7:30pm (we don’t usually hit the road until 8ish). Everyone is welcome; this month we had people from 12 to 65 years old riding everything from BMX to single speeds to vintage road bikes and hardcore mountain bikes.

I’ll post a reminder here before next month’s event.