CM is so tough for me to justify sometimes. I think it has such great potential, but I have more trouble with it every month-- doubley so because I'm one of the few organizers for our monthly ride here in Blacksburg. While we've had a few large ride (60ish riders) the majority of our rides lately have been at most twenty people and even with that few people we've had to expressively state on our flyers "agitators and instigators not welcome".

Its so tempting-- I won't lie, I've taken so much guilty joy in the few times I've had to cork a lane to make sure a car didn't attempt to snake into the middle of us; you're trackstanding and looking that pickup driver down for everytime you've been tapped, beeped at, yelled at, or cornered off the road. It isn't his fault though and as every minute passes I always end up feeling guilty.

Some of the people have posted about how blowing stop signs, red lights, and/or corking lanes is one of the reasons people are so uneasy about CM. While I can only speak for our rides, these methods are used to insure the safety of the riders and to keep us as a pack. When you're only riding with 20-30 people its tough to break up at every red light and even more dangerous for those few riders in the back who would only ride in traffic if its in a group. Corking the lanes simply keep cars out of the mass, which (as illustrated by the incredibly unfortunate event in the article) keeps both the cars and the bikes a lot safer.

And still with every ride-- its becomes tougher. I understand everyone's want to fight back-- you finally feel completely comfortable on the road and completely empowered. Its so easy at that point to stoop to the same level as the ******* who cut you off this morning or those frat mother****ers who threw a beer at you last Friday night.

Its events like the one in the article, though, that makes organizing these events so difficult. The bike co-op here had to recently stop even using the term as some of our sponsorship felt very negatively about the word. We could have as many group rides as we wanted, but if we put CM on any of our flyers our sponsors were ready to pull the plug.

I'd love to hear more thoughts about CM, as its obviously been a huge internal debate for me. I see both sides and no easy solution.