Critical Mass Whangarei, New Zealand
By Claire Chateau
When I picture my perfect town to live in, I view people going everywhere on bikes. I imagine a city centre where people meet and chat waiting at the red light, a place where babies enjoy the scenery from the back seat of their dad’s bicycles, older kids safely riding back from school. A city where you can just borrow a bike for free from the side of the road to reach a place, then put it back for others to use (ln the same way the Parisians have the Velib’.)
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Well, unfortunately the reality for the two-wheelers around Whangarei is not quite that close to this dream idyllic picture. Very little space is provided to cyclists and the road is far from being user-friendly. The patience of drivers is rather limited, and by the time you’ve cycled for 10 minutes and been horned 5 times, after being scared a few times with not seeing the trailer attached to the car turning in front of you, you’re ready to promote walking to your kids and making sure they get into scooters so that they stay safe on the pavement!
A group of enthusiastic fervent regular bike users is on a mission to bring change. By introducing Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.org.nz) to the community they hope to develop better awareness from drivers for two-wheelers. Critical Mass is a spontaneous, leaderless bicycle ride that occurs on the last Friday of every month in almost every major city in the world. It is regarded by many participants as celebrations of self-powered transportation as opposed to a protest or organised demonstration. Lydia Mair, one of the Northland organisers says: “The idea is to take the streets on our bikes to have fun, meet each other and to make a presence that clearly states bikes are acceptable on our roads.”
The first event in Whangarei is this friday, 29th of October at 6.30, opposite the Old Library and is happening at the same time in Auckland on the theme “Critical Massquerade” (more info on the website).
A new era for bikers has hopefully arrived!!
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Critial Mass was fantastic! So many god spirited people turned up and pedalled round for an hour talking, and planning for the beautiful future town you described above Claire.
My dream town is a community of people using human powered transport, eating chemical-free local vegan food and using a gift-economy. The Whangarei Vegan & Vegetarian Social Group will be discussing this at the potluck next weekend!
The next CM will be starting an hour earlier at 5.30pm on 26th Nov outside the library.
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woops *GOOD* spirited
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Thank you Tom for the info.We will be here next month!
I have the wonderful feeling that we are heading towards this dream town very fast…
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Agreed, critical mass was fantastic. It was a beautiful sunny evening
as we cycled around Whangarei centre. There was a real positive vibe about the whole thing especially the people involved.
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dear everybody, i have been looking on the net and got to this website because i wanna get in touch with claire chateau, she is my old french teacher from kamo high and i would just LOVE to get in touch with her. please, if you read this, could you get back to me? i guess this is the right claire chateau, ive been looking everywhere!
my email is [email protected] . to anybody else, that could be able to help me, please get back to me. i would much appreciate it. thx!!
signe, germany
ps: this isnt spam! please be nice and help me out!
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Hi Signe,
Great to hear from you! I will email you…Send us some Good News from Germany!!!
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[...] just posted up an article called ‘Critical Mass Whangarei’. It was written by one of our local good news writers – Claire Chateau. I’m pleased [...]