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Critical Mass is a monthly bicycle ride to celebrate cycling and to assert cyclists' right to the road. The idea started in San Francisco in September 1992 and quickly spread to cities all over the world. This site attempts to be the most complete guide to all Critical Mass rides around the globe.

Critical Mass has a different flavor from city to city -- there's a big variety in size, respect of traffic laws (or lack thereof), interaction with motorists, and intervention by police. So if you want to know more about Critical Mass, you'll really need to find out what your local ride is like. For those who must know more right now, here's a link to Chicago CM, which I suppose is a "typical" CM ride, if there is such a thing.

Critical Mass has no leaders, and no central organization licenses rides. In every city that has a CM ride, some locals simply picked a date, time, and location for the ride and publicized it, and thus the ride was born.

CM is an idea and an event, not an organization. You can't write to "Critical Mass" -- certainly not by writing to me.

CM is intended to be a celebration, not an opportunity to cause trouble. Those who want to try to tie up traffic as much as possible and be confrontational with motorists are missing the point. We can assert our right to the road without being rude about it. Focus on the ride, not on the cars that also happen to be on the road.

Join other Richmond Cyclists and bike riders and fixed gear fanatics and belle isle mountain bikers and tricyclists and everyone who likes moving without motors for a monthly bike ride to assert bike rights and to make cyclists in Richmond visible.

All sectors of bike culture in Richmond are welcome and encouraged.

Critical Mass bike rides are a strategy that has been used all over the country to make visible how many bikes there are on the road. Keeping visible, and always working for more bikes and fewer cars can help keep us safe.

By riding together and showing the number of people who are passionate about riding bikes we can make our presence known, encourage others to start riding bikes, and have a lot of fun!

So if you want to come ride, please do! Tell your friends, bring your kids, bring your tall bike, bring your smile. Lets show Richmond how much more fun it is to ride a bike with a group of friends than it is to sit alienated in a car.

Make your own fliers if you want to advertise the event or to pass out to pedestrians and motorists we pass on the ride. Meet at 5, at the corner of Main and Laurel in Monroe Park, right across the street from the Landmark Theater. We will plan to head out at 5:30. We will decide on the route we want to take together!

Make sure you dress warmly and helmets are encouraged!

We know that Critical Mass rides are a tactic that have been highly debated/criticized/ discussed. I know that in Richmond and other places there have been some rides that were super awesome, some that really got the point across, and some that left participants feeling not so good. But don't write off Critical Mass all together because of some bad experiences. We can make this what we want it to be. If nothing else it can be a super fun group ride. Give it a shot, come and talk about your past experiences with such rides- positive and negative.