I drive a large sedan to work every weekday, all by myself. Every evening I drive home in the same car, again alone. Within minutes of closing the driver’s door and turning the ignition, my car is blowing warm air on my face and sweet music in my ears. Sometimes there is traffic, sometimes I just blow by, but there is always a certain joy in having those solitary moments in my car.

On one of these typical drives home last week, I noticed a relatively large group of cyclists wheeling around Capitol Square. I was surprised to see so many braving the late-October elements on two wheels. “Perhaps these cyclists have never known the joys of the solitary car ride?” I thought to myself. I was so curious that I ruined my climate-controlled drive to roll down my window and ask one of the bikers what was going on. “Critical Mass” he replied.

For the life of me, I could not figure out what biking in bad weather had to do with any critique of the Holy Eucharist. His answer didn’t do much for me, other than spark my curiosity. I hopped on the information superhighway (God bless you, Al Gore, and all your inventions), determined to find information about this so-called Critical Mass.

Critical Mass is apparently a movement that started nowhere else but sunny San Francisco. The movement glorifies bikes as a superior means of transport, but the Critical Mass’ seem most motivated by their hatred of what they call America’s “car culture.”

Now, I have no problem with bikes. Especially in the campus area, they are a cheap and effective transport to class, the library and the bars. The sheer popularity of bikes and the number of bikers around the campus and downtown areas proves this.

But Critical Mass appears to be less pro-bike than they are simply anti-car. Cars are choking our people, wasting our resources, melting the icecaps, blah blah blah. The Critical Massers’ inability to pass their political agenda of higher gas taxes and toll roads has led them to direct action: worldwide monthly attempts to block car traffic by pedaling en-masse at a slow pace on busy streets.

Only, they believe they are not slowing or blocking traffic, because they assert that “they are the traffic.” This may be an interesting twisting of words to create legal ambiguity, but I don’t see any logical ambiguity. It is known to most (though not enough) drivers that slower “traffic” needs to stay to the right. That goes for SUVs doing 65 on the beltline, it goes for VW hippie busses topping out at 40 on John Nolan, and it sure goes for a group of middle-aged bikers wheeling around the Capitol.

I don’t care if you are in a wheelchair; if you are in the left lane, and you aren’t passing somebody, you need to get out of the way unless you want me tailing you at three feet with my brights on and my horn in your ear.

Fortunately, despite all their rhetoric, my commute posed me little problem as I casually passed the bikers Friday. They seemed to stay in the right lane, and I rolled up my window and continued on in the left. My car slowly returned to the warmth I was accustomed to as they presumably continued pedaling around and taunting their police escorts in the miserable weather.

Perhaps they would have veered in front of me if they had only known how much I enjoy America’s car culture, but they didn’t. Critical Mass sums up the direct-action dilemma on their website when they rhetorically ask, “what’s the big deal about a few-dozen bicyclists taking up the road once a month?” Of course it isn’t a big deal. That is why there is nothing critical about this mass, and why the car culture, for better or worse, isn’t going anywhere.

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.