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Last Friday, while the world's superpowers continued to drag their feet in the fight against global warming, ordinary citizens in towns and cities around the world went for a bike ride. Critical Mass rides, as they are known, are gatherings of cyclists, usually on the last Friday of every month, who ride en masse through city centers, raising awareness of the bicycle as a legitimate mode of transportation on normally car-clogged streets. The rides, of which there are hundreds in North American cities alone, vary from a handful of riders in some places, to thousands at infamously well-attended gatherings in Manhattan and San Francisco.

First envisioned as an expression of solidarity among hardcore urban cyclists, in recent years they have attracted a more diverse crowd, and become as much about the potential of bikes to combat global climate change as anything. Lately, isolated but well-publicized conflicts between a few overly militant riders and motorists have presented the Critical Mass phenomenon as an us-and-them fight, with cyclists and drivers squaring off for control of urban centers. This is unfortunate, as It undermines the larger, more important message that the rides carry: Regular people can do something good for themselves and the planet by riding a bike every now and then instead of driving. As we move into the bike friendly month of May, and the crisis of global warming wieghs ever-heavier on our collective conscience, bicycling stands out as one small thing most people can do to affect major change.