Note: This entry is adapted from my journal entry on Friday February 23, the day before the Otesha event that was the beginning of this whole project. I’m including it in this blog because it explains where I was coming from when this all started, and predating it accordingly.
Today Mass was my Salvation.
50 minutes into my return trip from the airport on the Gardiner Expressway, I start to lose it, trapped in traffic and imagining any possible way to get out, be it giving the cars ahead of me a gentle shove, or at least finding an exit where I can temporarily regain my sanity. On most days I would have given up, stopped at a bookstore and waited for the gridlock hell to end, but it had been three months since my last Critical Mass ride… I’d been looking forward to it all month and was now in danger of missing it due to car traffic, of all things.
Worse yet, the coffee my friends had kindly supplied as a reward for taking them to the airport had served its purpose and was waiting impatiently to be released, an act I contemplated committing into the same recepticle that I’d drunk it from, wondering in detail about the possibility of spillage, or of hitting another driver as I tossed it out the window. I imagined the mechanics of it, made possible because I’d worn a skirt for the first and only time all winter. After careful consideration, I declined the opportunity to efface my dignity on the road, resigning myself to let the bladder pain distract me from the maddeningly slow creep of traffic.
After nearly two hours I reach my destination. I race into the office and straight to the back, lifting the skirt above my frozen-red knees and remembering halfway through that I should have counted for the record to see whether this would be my longest pee ever.
It’s 6:15. Mass is scheduled to start at 6:30 and on a minus-five night like this they won’t wait for stragglers. This is all I’ve been looking forward to all day, my only relief from a high-stress but monotonous job and three brutal hours on the highway. My tires are flat from months of disuse, and it’s cold, but I can’t imagine anything better than the mental release and understated camaraderie of the Friday bike ride.
Within seven minutes I’ve changed into pants, filled my tires at the corner bike shop, and I’m on my way down College street, my unprepared legs and uncovered cheeks facing a wind tunnel that’s always strongest when you’re in a hurry. By the time I get to Bloor and Spadina it’s dark, my sweaty hair is sticking to my face and the thin gloves I’d grabbed are proving their inadequacy.
As I pull closer to the corner I see blinking LEDs and breathe a sigh of relief. They haven’t left without me. I pull up awkwardly to the group of 15 or 20 assembled cycles, seeing a few faces I recognize only under helmets from nearly two years of rides. Someone jokes that this looks like an AA meeting, “Hi, my name is Eric, and I ride in the winter.” I smile and look around. My bell-less bike and too-thin gloves betray me as a non-commuter, but my presence in the group is enough to belong. To add to my sense of exclusivity I count the women, five including me. I made it here and I feel great. I’m ready to ride.
I’ve ridden in Critical mass I’ve been able to since moving to Toronto. Each time I’m rewarded as my stress melts effortlessly within minutes of getting on the road. Breathing in the city air through my nose, I congratulate myself on surviving until Friday, completing another month, and making it out to Mass regardless of the crap I went through that day. For the first few cleansing minutes I direct my ever-filling inbox and car traffic woes down toward my handlebars, which seem happy enough to accept the abuse. When I look up from them, I’m surprised by the absence of the traffic that’s plagued me all day. The cars have resigned to putter behind us as we coast down Spadina in a protective cloud of cyclists.
Bundled in winter jackets, this ride is quieter than usual. Before long, though, we’re swept up in the simple euphoria of a gradual downhill unfettered by taxis and fumes. Behind me a bike bell rings and quickly escalates into a chorus of dings, whoops, and whistles. Pedestrians stop to watch and wave, and we respond “happy Friday,” both in greeting and in glorious observation.
We ride faster than usual, both keep warm because our small group can stay together without the snail’s pace of the hundreds that show up for summer rides. Instead of taking on Yonge St at rush hour with our small numbers, we default to Kensington Market where we know we’ll be well received. Waving at kids and restaurant employees in windows, I swoop back and forth across the road in celebration of our temporary supremacy over the road.
Turning onto Queen Street, our evening stroll becomes an exercise in gleeful civil disobediance, covering two lanes in a swarm of LEDs and dinging bells and yelling “Happy Friday” to incensed motorists. We get overconfident and make an illegal left turn, then stop on the corner to laugh at the red-faced cop impotently threatening to call for reinforcements as he shouts at the two or three people who had led the illicit charge. Obeying traffic laws is part of our message, but my annoyance with my fellow riders but I’m overcome by the humour of the situation. Soon the argument cools sufficiently for the team to assemble, and we’re back on the road before he can finish his doughnut.
Sufficiently frozen, I arrive at Bike Pirates for a rare post-ride event and am treated to a thick black sludge they call hot chocolate. It’s delicious. Red-cheeked and grinning, we help ourselves to a stir-fry graciously provided by Foodshare and I start conversations with people I’ve seen at every ride for 18 months and had never spoken to. They still seem a little hard core with their fingerless knit gloves and intimate knowledge of this anarchist bike mechanic cooperative, and I still don’t catch their names, but it doesn’t matter. I make a joke about the bike hearse that the cute but mysterious bike boy drags around to rides, and the girl I’m afraid of laughs, and it seems like a moment of acceptance, and I have a brief feeling of the community I’ve been looking for throughout all my moving and wandering.
It doesn’t take much, I realize, to be incorporated into this quirky village of Toronto – just the tiny courage it takes to do what I like doing without the safety net of existing friends. It tries to be revolutionary and anarchist and communalist and non-hierarchical and organic and every other counterculture word of the day, but it’s a culture, and it’s my inspiration today. Not the kind of inspiration you package and sell at a profit, but the goodness that comes of strangers meeting, without contrivances or awkwardness, united by common interests and unstated visions.
There are no expectations and we leave without exchanging numbers or even names, knowing that we don’t need to. We’ll see each other again because we’re part of the same community, or maybe we won’t, but we leave knowing that there are good people who have entered our lives and ceased to be strangers. I ride back into traffic alone, lighting my LEDs and calling “see you next month,” and finally feeling safe.
Today, I finally popped my MTB cherry. It's about time. Since buying my Gary Fisher four years ago I have logged countless miles of pavement riding, using the front shocks to hop curbs, avoiding bumps and potholes whenever possible, and rarely if ever straying outside the road-bike-accessible realm.
