A really good turnout for a CM in November, over 100 people at peak times. One sound system accompanied us on are ride visiting 2 fire stations to stop and cheer the fire-fighters. They really liked that, giving out stickers and getting petitions signed. We went to one in Soho and another in Euston. The Mass took a route up to Kings Cross before heading back into the centre of town, previously passing through Piccadilly circus (bikes up!) and Tottenham court road.
Surprisingly no cops turned up to this ride at all, this was very odd because at least the last 6 CM's have been heavily policed. This produced a problem because some Masser's seemed to have grown dependent on the police to do our jobs for us. Many people were not corking and letting cars straight into the mass. There were real cohesion problems tonight with people just not cooperating with each other to make the ride work. Admittedly it is hard to do, but when only a handful of people are putting the effort in to make the ride go smoothly it isn’t going to work. The only solution i can see to this is showing people how to ride a Critical Mass and the things you *have* to do to make it work: 1. Corking and stopping cars getting into the ride, 2. keeping the ride stuck together!
Central London's new paramedics on bikes joined us for 40 minutes of the ride (ride lasted about 2 and half hours), cycling very carefully and making sure not to do anything illegal or in any way dangerous!
What I think we should be working on to make CM more successful: publicising it more to get more people coming along, writing / printing prop to give to people on the ride to make it safer and leaflets to give to pedestrians and other cyclists / motorists explaining what we are doing - they really are interested!!!

Thats all I can think of at the moment, see you next month!

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