Velomutations

Canadaphiles come on in.

If you need ten hundred more reasons to love Canada, go to Vancouver, B.C. (aka Downtown Canada) for next year’s Velomutations weekend. Sprockettes reveled in our last performance of the summer on the last day of summer (12:30am to be precise) for Velomutations 2008.

Our journey began with a smooth ride up to Canada with the gracious and kind Allan Folz. Allan is a long-time active member of the Portland biking scene who traded in the 9 to 5 life to run Portland Sag Wagon, “a shuttle and concierge service for self-supported bicycle tourists.” He will haul you and your bikes anywhere you want and even silently disassemble said bikes and pack them into his van while you sleep. He will ride a bike, fix a bike, dance all night, and drive that van with only fairness in his heart. Beware to those who attempt to cut in front of Allan at the Canadian border in the future. We are indebted to him for teaching us how to deal with, shall we say, assertive Canadian drivers like a Zen master.

Major pink and black hugs go to Jackie, Adam, and their housemates for opening their home to us and covering their hardwood living room floor with mattresses ready for our late-night arrival from Portland. Their hospitality and dedication to biking in the autumnal Canadian rain are two of the reasons we love spending time in Downtown Canada every year. And the enormous banana trees growing in their front yard just adds to their greatness.

The bicycle dance team vibe is alive and kicking in Canada. Sprockettes spent time with Vancouver’s B:C:Clettes and Victoria Island’s VeloVixens Saturday afternoon, planning and scheming ways to change the world through bicycle dancing and touring, the spirit of collectives, and empowering women and all people to take to the streets with wild abandon, love, and community-building badassocity.

Saturday evening began with a lovely pizza dinner snarfed down on the fly. Maybe we shouldn’t be so taken, but there was something sort of romantic about girls ordering Canada Dry pop to drink and slices with pineapple and Canadian (!) bacon. I thought they might call it something else up there, like, I dunno, ham, but they continue to surprise us even with the most mundane details. We cruised down to the Science World Gazebo for the evening performance ride. When we arrived, the sweet sounds of a samba percussion group wafted out from the front of the building near a giant marble castle installation sculpture art thing in the shadow of the building’s geodesic dome. Vancouver’s incredible red, black, and shiny B:C:Clettes performed, including in their set live singing, staged bike thievery, and the showing off of many 27 inch rims. The audience happily lit the stage with dozens of hand-held bike lights. From there, 100 or so cyclists headed out for a massive ride through Downtown Canada on minis, bmxs, tall bikes, ten speeds, mountain bikes, and road bikes. Our first stop was the bmx stylings of Vancouver’s own male mini-bike dance trio, Brakes. Around the time they’d stripped down to their signature colored tighties and lit their ramps on fire, a couple of Vancouver security guards in SUVs showed up. Contrary to what some of us thought, the guards didn’t shut down the ¾ nude fire cyclists but waited around till the end and received a rousing thank you shout out from Brakes dancers. Those Canadians are so nice. The next leg of our bike ride took us to our final destination, The Sweatshop, location of the party and next two performances.

Sprockettes hit the road back to headquarters for second dinner and changing into costumes. Timing wasn’t on our sides, and we arrived at the party site in time to catch only the last four minutes of VeloVixen’s utterly epic, breath-stealing rendition of Alice in Wonderland. After a bit of bike jousting and some human rubber band games involving minis and bike tubes, Sprockettes took the stage. MCBF this summer had brought the B:C:Clettes down to Portland, and a couple of their girls had their debut performances in our fair town. Happily, a couple Sprockettes lived the same dream and gave their dance premieres in Vancouver. The set was gorgeous, the stage was tiny, and the crowd screamed until their throats were dry. We closed down the club dancing with the crowd to a DJ, hanging out in the courtyard, and receiving marriage proposals here and there. Many girls kept the joy alive at an after-party across the alley.

Sunday we weren’t able to make the bomb ride since we had to get back on the road. A bunch of us had to get to work early Monday morning, something the Canada border guards somehow had a hard time believing. We had a great thrill spending the last of our colorful Canadian bills and coins on popsicles and ice cream sandwiches from North America’s most envied capitalist. Parked right between two lanes of highway, shortly before the border guards, was an industrious gentleman with an umbrella cap selling hot dogs and ice cream. We bought as many as he would sell us with our meager offering and shared them all around the van. Thanks for letting us eat melty ice cream in the van, Allan!

Thank you to everyone who made Velomutations such an amazing event and for getting us there. So many more bike events happened that weekend that aren’t written about here (because we were too busy practicing our set on a tennis court in the rain next to a classically Canadian bike polo match to make it to them). Our collective is energized, goals for building community have been set into motion, and summer ’09 plans are already filling our imaginations.