Todays Critical Mass had 3 sound systems - this was the smallest.
There were balloons,
and flowers and big smiles.
And there were lots of bikes..
Music mostly from x1 Project (Wayne Huff) Lunar Beach from Ultima Thule programme 643, Nightmares on Wax's Smoker's Delight and Hybrid's Live Angle: Sydney and finished off with ARC's Rise.
Popup is an independant cycle centre on Corporation Street in Manchester, just North East of Victoria Station. It was featured on the Guardian web site last week.
It has facilities for bike parking,
bike maintenance,
a cafe
and lounge area, complete with lawn mower :)
I had a lovely chat with owner Dipak Patel who has tried to get help from the local council & transport authority, but he has received no help at all and in the end has gone it alone. Dipak is a realist, but also very much into the social and cultural aspects of cycling and I hope he makes a sucess of this venture.
If you listen carefully to this piece on Radio 4's You and Yours, you can start to unpick the figures and find out how Manchester City Council and British Cycling have chosen a measure of cycling that fits the aims of British Cycling whilst leave the general cyclist out in the cold.
The survey currently puts Manchester 8th in the country for levels of cycling with 43,000 people getting onto a bicycle once a month. Yes, that's right, the survey counts the number of people who cycle at least once a month and has nothing to do with the proportion of journeys by bicycle.
In other words Manchester City Council can meet its chosen target of 20,000 more cyclists even if the level of cycling on Manchester's streets falls significantly.
We've all seen it - the abandoned bicycles blocking parking spaces at work, left there by one-way cyclists who rode to work one day and took a taxi home.
Even worse are the bicycle that have been stored at their place of work because they don't have anywhere to store the bike at home. For those of us who cycle to work every day these people are taking up valuable parking spaces.
Maybe Bike Week should include a "Cycle Home Again" event...
There were lots of pedal powered machines on show at the Manchester Day Parade.
And the occasional city councillor...
Some had fewer wheels than others.
By the end of the day some people looked knackered!
Whilst the clean up operation joined in the spirit.
Whilst the machines were mostly pedal powered, the sound systems etc were battery powered - some people were clearly not aware of the dangers of exposed battery terminals!
Despite the monotony of cyclists dressed up as mobile advertising hoardings, a few participants did stand out from the crowd. I spotted a couple of three-wheelers, one recumbent in fetching pink sporting the skull and crossbones.
The other a rather nice green handcycle.
In the two-wheeled class was this machine, where the rider can't sit down.
No chance of saddle sores there!
And these two gents riding these lovely scaled down machines who gave a shout and a wave as they rode past.
And I spotted one, just one, participant in the ride who managed to buck the trend of monotonous headgear.
For the rest of us the opportunity to ride the Mancunian way was too much of an opportunity to let pass and the marshals didn't seem to object to the presence of non-participants on the route.
After all, it was pretty easy to spot the riders with bare heads, no numbers and in most cases a more leisurely approach to cycling.
Though one thing that struck me was how much of the time the closed off roads were empty, it seemed such a waste of a good road closure. Also, as the video below shows, there were, unfortunately, rather a lot of motorbikes on the route too.
