Earth Day Critical Mass

A few photos from Sunday's Critical Mass ride in Budapest. No telling how many thousands of people participated... they were still pouring up Andrassy into the park when i left, so i'm guessing around 50.000. The message, as they say, is in the medium. In the bridge span shot , you can see (a little) that the entire bridge is full of bikers, as was the bridge that i was on when taking the photo. Lots of kids, lots of rollerbladers and a respectable contingent of unicyclists. At the appointed time - even though so many were still on their way in or hadn't even reached the park - the traditional 'wheels in the air' group hug. Nice event, too bad it doesn't happen every month. As one rider explained to me, 'then it wouldn't be as big,' which in magyar terms i suppose means not as significant (somehow) although coming from the city where the critical mass movement originated, i tend to think otherwise. In case your wondering why so many people were dressed in green, the British Council had an Earth Day event in the park that afternoon and were giving out t-shirts.... what i really wanted was a Critical Mass shirt, evidently you have to be a traffic cop or just a really kool guy to get one of those.

Revised data: Just read in a newspaper the official count was 80.000 - wow! Hopefully this will lead to more bike lanes in the city :-)

Transit strike in Budapest today, as well as on metropolitan commuter trains. What happens? More people drive. This is already a really stupid choice for all kinds of non-strike-related reasons; if someone wants to support transit workers having fair, sane working conditions as part of supporting a better public transit system OVERALL, riding a bike during the strike is a much better option.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead has a piece in today's Guardian about changing habits in the interest of slowing down climate change/reducing greenhouse gases. As i often notice in the British blogosphere (much more than in its American counterpart), readers' comments prove to be equally if not more insightful than the article being commented on. And of course, you can't put anything out there anymore that doesn't get scrutinized for contradictions (a good thing). Yorke structures his commentary around how to dodge the wicked witch's "I'm melting... melting" gloom and doom mindset. The fact that so many people can wax knowledgeable on this issue is perhaps the most uplifting aspect of it all.