Today's account of a critical memorial from a first time participant and I WILL RIDE AGAIN.

Today was my first ride with Critical Mass, and what an important ride to be on with the tragedy from this past week and as a fellow cyclist. We have such a strong community of bicycle riders here in Portland, it is an awesome feeling to be riding with a few hundred of them next to you on metropolitan streets. The cops and corporate media were for sure out in force. What I do not understand is the need for 10- 15 motorcycle cops, vans and 5 - 10 cop cars as well as 20 or so bike cops. They are the ones blocking the road, riding in bicycle lanes, and disobeying bike and traffic laws.! Along the way we witnessed at least 10+ bicyclists being ticketed, each surrounded by 3 - 6 cops! As i see it we should be receiving a THANKS from the Portland Police Department and Mayor Katz for once a month providing them with a bonus paycheck from all the unnecessary ticketing!

The ride itself minus the ignorant, uptight, over bearing cops, was awesome, to be riding up Hawthorne and seeing the mass of bicycles riding up hill, then on Belmont from 30th Avenue to 39th we took the entire 9 blocks! YEA bikes.

Once at 39th and Belmont up to 40th we had the entire road blocked with bicycles waving in the air, you could feel a strong, positive, somber mood in the air as cyclists came together to memorialize the deceased and seriously injured riders from the past week.

I was holding sign, that was created by a fellow shifter, stating, "CYCLIST, KILLED HERE, by CAR!" and I felt a sense of community, a sense of grief and a sense of a bunch of GREAT love for the people surrounding me. We held a minute of silence, as I got tears in my eyes, I looked around at the majority of the people, holding their heads in thought, and wondered, "have you ever seen a group of people in cars stop and get out and hold a minute of silence for those killed in an oil war, to support their driving habits? or to mourn the loss of a fellow automobilist?" Ok that might be extreme, but a drunk driver killed 2, and hopefully not a third, that is EXTREME.

Afterwards, the policeman sitting in his car with the engine running was chanting to us with his speaker: "THIS IS THE PORTLAND POLICE..." as if we could not distinguish him from the crowd of bikes? There was a young man holding a sign stating, "Cars Kill more people in a year than the vietnam war" he was standing next to the curb, and immediately he was harrased, an officer pulled his sign down, I geuss it is not allright to think or make public statements against the mass automobile society, then he was ARRESTED! what a crime, ey. holding a sign, educating the passerbys and well OK annoying the police, but there is no where I have ever read or seen that says this is against the law?!

The crowd slowly dispursed and went in several different directions. Some people continued on to the site where Paul T. Hriskos was killed one week and a day ago. Some people travelled down 39th and that is where I lost everyone. Except for a small crowd of us just up a few blocks from Stark, at Laurelhurst Park, where a young man who was ticketed after about 20 minutes of discussion and quite a scene, we all would not leave until they let him go. It took 6 motorcycle cops to talk to him and his mom, one to talk to us, and one to direct traffic. What I gathered was he looked at the cop wrong, and was wrongly accused of signaling because most of the small crowd witnessed his signal, I think the cops were just looking to give out another $300 ticket, yes $300!

My conclusion:

but when the biking community wants to do this......CRACK HEADS man, cuz we are such a threat! Which is ironic, because we power our own transportation, cut down on automobile traffic, wear and tear on pavement, pollution, road rage, and wars for oil, somehow this is EVIL?