…was this evening. went to bike shop to get a new, smaller cog for my fixed wheel bicycle. the guy asked if i was going. didn’t know that there was one. conversation went on a little and i asked him where i could score some grass and he said his mate would be there so best ask him. so along i went.

got to the trefftpunkt and there were about 40 people and a journo from bayrische rundfunk – the state broadcaster. he interviewed me at the start and asked why i was there, if i’d been before and what was i expecting.

off we set at a slow pace, picking up passing cyclist on the way. holding up traffic, pissing off the car drivers behind. this would cause the drivers to squeeze past leaving inches to spare between wing mirror and riders.

i found the pace was silly slow. my average speed was about 14kmph. we went up to one end of town and then back along the same road in the other direction, again causing the cars to come up behind at a snails pace and roar past when they had the chance.

the journo spoke to me again towards the end. he asked what i thought and i said it was good to see so many people out on bikes for the sake of it, that there should be more people out on bikes in general as this would bring the average speed of the cars down but doing it this way just pissed people off and gave us a bad name. also said it was particularily unfair on those that use the roads to earn a living, taxi and delivery drivers.

this in turn was earning us a bad name.

there are a lot of bikes on the road in munich but more cars and many of those cars are big engined BMWs, audis etc carrying one or two people.

i’m probably going to meet on sunday a few of those that were there along with the ‘ring leader’, a punk (he really is a punk, they are everywhere in germany) student (no feggin surprise). will tell them what i thought.

any other citical mass experiences?

oh, and i never did meet the man with connections, hence why i’m going on sunday….