Leo lives with his family in Tampa Bay (USA) and has become a well-known figure in the community bike scene as a hero for diversity and inclusion after having his left leg amputated following a motorbike accident 14 years ago.
After learning to walk again, he started riding a bike to get around. This soon became an integral part of his identity, mobility and independence.
Leo started getting involved in community bike rides (like critical mass and weekly social night events), then single speeds and fixies and this lead to racing track cycling – and then all kinds of riding.
What I love about Leo and his story is his how positive and relatable he is – he just loves riding his bike.
There is much to learn from Leo’s story about overcoming adversity, being open to trying new things, being bold and brave, perseverance, being true to yourself, leading through example, surrounding yourself with good people, and the profound ways bicycles can change people, break down barriers and transform lives.
I’ve been following Leo for a few years now. I dig his genuine passion for riding all types of bikes, being connected with community and how he stoked he gets sharing his passion with others.
It is just an added bonus that he has mad bike handling skills – endurance, skills, balance, speed, epic track standing prowess and the rest!
You can find heaps of online content about Leo – he’s been in news reports, blogs, articles, cycling documentaries and lots of YouTube videos (just type his name into the internet to see!) if you want to find out more about his story and adventures.
For background: His local paper the Tampa Bay Times published an article by Chris O’Donnell that chronicles his childhood and entry into the cycling world with a level of detail I had not see elsewhere.
On the bike: Peter Flax did a great article for Bicycling on Leo in May 2020 in which they go for a ride and talk about Leo’s cycling history, approach to riding (and life), successes and personal style to come through. (It is well worth the read.) Here’s a little of what Peter wrote about Leo’s bike affiliations
Leo isn’t in a bike tribe—he’s in all of them. He likes to go out at night in khaki shorts and smash it with a fixie crew and he likes to do hard paceline training rides with the local spandex roadies and he likes to go out for gravel epics with dudes who consume a lot of CBD chewies. He does alley cats and pub crawls and off-road centuries. He noodles around the waterfront on a tall bike he helped fabricate.
Leo’s Instagram @slimone1000 show the range of events he is involved in and the types of bikes he rides: track cycling, fixi, tandem, urban commute, street/park, mountain-biking, bike packing, cruising with critical mass, his beloved blue and pink repainted singlespeed bombora, bike riding adventures, events, social meet ups, and good times with friends.
His Instagram motto is: ‘overcoming adversity through cycling’.
As Peter writes: ‘Without explicitly trying, Leo makes a powerful statement every time he pedals through his community.’
What an inspiration for his kids, for the biking community, and for us all.
An inspiring good news story from Myanmar where bicycles really are creating more positive social and environmental change!
Recently, I came across an article written by Phoe Wah in The Myanmar Times detailing a local tech entrepreneur’s social enterprise which uses global bike-sharing surplus to get more rural Myanmar kids to school.
Like many young students across Myanmar, Saw, Suu Lel had to walk for miles to reach school from his small Kayin village. Every morning he would wake at 5 am to make it to his morning class, and would only return at dusk after walking for another hour to get home. The long commute was an added source of stress for the young scholar as it took time away from his homework. Coming from a poor family, Saw, Suu Lel also wished to help his parents but the distance is too great to reach their workplace by foot. However, Saw, Suu Lel tedious routine or changed overnight. Like the other students in the village, he received a brand-new bicycle.
Since the day the bikes arrived, the morning streets in the village look very different. A line of yellow bikes, written by delighted students, makes its way through the main streets towards the school.
Mike Than Tun, the founder of the Myanmar technology company BOD Tech Venture is behind this goodwill gesture. Aside from investing in tech projects around the country, the 33-year-old businessman doubles as a philanthropist. His main area of interest is education.
“Education is the best way to alleviate poverty” is Mike Than Tun’s mantra. The bikes are aimed at giving school children a more efficient and fun way to get to school. According to Mike, many students drop out of school because when they move to middle and high school the schools are very far away from the villages with some walking up to 2 hours in the early morning. When it rains, walking times can be extended even further.
“Less walking will help the student save 80% of their travel time. We believe having Bikes will improve absenteeism and overall lateness giving more time for students to study and allow them to focus in class. It’s also safer for female students as I can reach home before dark,” said Mike Than Tun.
Having lived for nearly 18 years in Singapore, Mike Than Tun realized the extent of the problem during his travels to rural Myanmar. On his travels across the countryside, he remembered seeing lines of young students walking long distances to school. He realized that many families could not afford a bicycle and seeing a school bus was a rarity.
Myanmar imports large quantities of used bicycles from Thailand and Japan which can provide much-needed form of cheap transportation for some people. Despite the secondhand imports, many families still can’t afford a used bicycle.
His idea first took shape in 2018 when the Chinese bike-sharing provider Obike announce bankruptcy and their companies Ofo and Mobike withdrew from the Southeast Asia market. This left plenty of spare bicycles abandoned, available for scrap dealers or recycling plants.
“It is extremely heartbreaking to see the amount of money and resources wasted white sharing companies that all ended up at scrap. A new bicycle is estimated to cost between USD$ 150-200 to manufacture now all ends up as a huge social and public nuisance. It’s sad that rich nations might not know how to treasure such a simple necessity. But for people in need, it can make a huge impact and even be life-changing,” said Tun.
Through his initiative Less Walk.com, the philanthropist buys and imports the obsolete bike-sharing bicycles into Myanmar at a fraction of the original cost and distributes them for free to students living below the poverty line. Students who benefit the most typically walk over two kilometres a day and are enrolled in grade 6 – 10. Since last June, the Less Walk project has already imported 10,000 brand-new Obikes.
“We will modify the bicycles to add a seat in the back so that siblings can ride to school. We will also remove the digital lock and replace it with a regular lock for the students” Mike added.
So far, Mike’s charity has already helped students in Sagaing, Yangong, Mon and Thanithariyi regions and the founder intends to cover other places in Myanmar in the future. Words of his good deeds have travelled as far as America, Netherlands, Japan and China where people started to donate bikes to his project.
Mike hopes to expand the program from 10,000 bikes to 100,000 bikes in two years.
“We want to raise awareness that the circular economy is possible and one man’s problems can be another man’s opportunity” he said.
*Main content and all images sourced from Phoe Wah’s article and Less Walk. Some content is edited.
Nina and Zoe the kelpie. ‘Follow the dog’ trail. Forest, VIC.
Many trail riders are what you might call ‘outdoor people’.
One of the greatest delights trail riders can have is going for a ride on wicked trails with best mates. And when I say best mates, I mean two-wheeled (of course), but also two-legged (human mates) and four-legged (trail dogs) mates.
I love riding trails with dogs.
My kelpie Zoe and I have been on many happy bike riding adventures.
Having a dog just makes life, and riding your bike, so much fun.
Ruby the Trail dog is one of many trail dogs that I go to if I need a lift and seeing her out on natural singletrack with her MTB dad turns always makes me smile.
There are always some great content, videos, products and artworks circulating for special events and days like US National Dog Day.
Or the big-hearted project Riding for Rescues, a program where bike riders raise money to help, rescue and sponsor animals (many of them dogs) to get them out of high-kill shelters and be re-homed instead of being put down.
Recently I got sent a link for A Dogs Tale which celebrates dogs and trail riders. It is in a similar vein to Paws and Wheels, but with a stronger narrative line from the POV of retired trail dog Raven.
This video has a mix of all kinds of shapes, sizes, colours, ages, locations and breeds. In this video we are introduced to:
Raven (the narrator)
Levi
Lucy & Sid
Driggs
Nash
Emmy
They are all adorable and make you want to get out on your bike on single track.
So many awesome bike riding trails, environments and moments.
Emmy’s tummy scrub at 6′ 55″ is such a great slo-mo shot! Just saying!
So do your mental health a favor … and check the video out.
The description for this video reads:
It all starts with the trail. The crunch of the dirt, the smell of a dewy morning ride, or the feeling of brushing away pebbles with a perfectly timed belly scrub.
These are the happy memories of a trail dog’s life well lived.
Raven is a 13-year-old retired trail dog from Squamish, British Columbia who’s spent countless days frolicking on loamy singletrack beneath towering spruces. Old age has slowed her down, and now Raven happily lies in the driveway, watching dog after dog, and their human, head for the hills.
Celebrating the joys of mountain biking through the eyes of the trail dog, Raven takes us from her driveway memories in BC to the high deserts of Utah, to freshly cut South African trails and back again.
We meet some of the feistiest, four-legged trail personalities along the way, who all enjoy the mountain bike world in their own way, just like us humans do, whether it’s hitting jump lines, lapping through the loam, or setting out to build new trail.
Terry Barentsen is an NYC-based bike rider-creative who makes incredible mobile videos about urban biking and the associated lifestyle – and much more his YouTube channel is very popular and rightfully so. Terry’s content is crisp, inspiring, professional and highly engaging.
My favorite videos are the Hotline series, where Terry rides behind a local rider (who is miked up) and then follows them as they ride around their local area – which is usually a densely populated city.
These clips are incredible to watch. It is exciting watching highly skilled (mostly fixie) riders zooming dangerously around New York, Mexico City, Moscow, San Francisco, Rome, Tokyo or where ever.
Below is a 100-word worlding I wrote about the Hotline videos:
Worlding: Lessons from Hotlining
Research lessons from Terry Barentsen’s hyper-urban street bike riding Hotline videos. Fear and excitement comingle. Bodies, bikes, cities, noises, skills, congestions, objects, demands and decisions. Moving intuitively. Operating on feel and precognition. Bravery shoves perilousness into oncoming traffic. Constant(ly) urgent flow(s). Giving red lights, erratic vehicles and law-abiding pedestrians the finger. Always pushing and scanning just ahead(s). Whistles, shouts and drag-hitches on cab doors. Scaring yourself and others. (con)Sensual (re)Activity. Instances of recovery and realisation. Extreme moments of confluence. Getting to where you need to be, faster. One long, unedited, continuous journey of think-ride-living in the middle.
Getting into Hotlining
Although mostly located in the US, Terry travels widely and I really appreciate the broad range of diverse people, places and bike styles he showcases – he genuinely includes everyone – and they are all equally exciting to watch for different reasons.
The sometimes included daggy 1970s Hotline intro is hilarious.
You don’t need to be a bike rider to appreciate a Hotline.
Zipping down streets, over embankments, skidding between cars, dodging walkers, jumping barriers, crossing lines and managing fasts speeds, traffic, built environs and themselves the whole time. Unreal!
Watching fixie riders is exhilarating: their skill, grace and bravery is incredible – and definitely not always legal. I find myself mesmerized as I watch how they hold speed, what lines they chose to take, the snap decisions they need to make and how the city lives, breathes and orientates around everything that moves – it is literally poetry in motion.
I’m a Hotline fan for many reasons, least of all because it is highly original content, beautifully produced videography, celebrates ALL kids of bikers and bike riding, takes in all the sensory surrounds, is inclusive, positive, exciting and creative, and is exclusively focused on the embodied, moving POV of the riders in situ.
I also really appreciate that most of these videos are one-shot non-edited footage – raw as!
And I love that the whole series is about celebrating all different types of riders (and not just focused on Terry himself) – how refreshing!
Some of the Hotlines, have cool Jazz or World Music tunes overlayed, other times there is no music, sometimes both. I dig being able to hear the rider breathing and talking as they whip and whizz and ride. The quality ASMR immersion of the ride helps better appreciate the dynamicism and noise of the riding activity and surrounding vibrancy: honking, braking, music blaring, road crossing beeps, pedestrians talking, snippets of conversations, natural sounds of wheels on surfaces, bus engines ….and all the while being able to ride-with a rider-bike-environs assemblage.
As well as the Hotline videos, Terry’s channel also has HEAPS of other associated bikey-interest content, like video diaries, tech info and explanations, bike checks, special bike styles/models (fixies, road, track, singlespeeds, MTB), ‘How to’s, night rides, ride-alongs, meet the rider/interviews, event, rides and site visitations, a series called ‘chasing strangers’. There’s also a few tech-specific video playlists like the 4K series, stills, 360s and a few unspecified off-cuts, rough-cuts and ‘shorts’ that always have something a little left of center.
So if you haven’t already seen the Hotlines, series, I highly recommend on your next tea break to go and check out a few different Hotline rides – I guarantee… you will not be disappointed!
This time last year I was in Lunsar (Sierra Leone) undertaking my bikes-for-education fieldwork.
I often think of what I saw, felt, learnt, and experienced there.
The trip was exciting, profound and challenging.
I sift through my research journal and field notes, diving into them, drinking in the details of memories brought back to life in full technicolour.
So many significant moments that won’t make it into my thesis.
Moments like Mariama and the Addax Aunties singing me in.
Addax school distribution. Girl-student-new bike. Photo: Nina Ginsberg.
It is late afternoon and everyone is hot. We are in Addax and have just finished a long day delivering a school bike distribution program at the only high school for miles around. We are far from anywhere. It took a long, rutty, dusty trip squished between Kao (precariously pillion-perched behind me) and Ben upfront. I marveled as Ben cheerfully bounced the struggling moped over the dirt road to get us here, two at a time, earlier this morning. He made numerous trips shuttling all the staff members to the school collection point. I admire his skill and grace as he navigates the precarious transfer in such harsh conditions – hard work(er) indeed. It is so remote. There is no way to walk the distance or drive on this surface. Access is so limited. As I wait for the others, I think of the isolation and the implications of this walking-world for the women and girls who live here. Inconceivable. Humbling. Unsettling. I wonder what it’s like for school girls riding bikes here.
After a day at the school, Ben ferries us individually to a family a few kilometers away to gather, rest and await our return transport back to Lunsar. We will be here for a while. As the ‘guest’, I was the first of Ben’s deliveries, but on arrival I see Jak magically got here before me. I wave to him from the other side of the yard. I watched him do great work today, explaining in Kriol basic bike maintenance to the students. He was a superstar. He smiles and nods to me and accepts a drink of water as he collapses into a nearby plastic chair. Ben grins and tells me to wait here and rest: he is going back for the others. No problem I say. He takes off in a cloud of red dust. I look around me.
I see a young girl approaching me. It takes me a moment to realise she is one of the students from the school. She was in the workshop we ran. Attentive and confident, she had shuffled students around to position herself to sit next to me all morning. I liked her bold style. She had smiled shyly at me the whole time. Walking towards me now, she has changed out of her school uniform which is why I didn’t recognise her. Her clothes are oversized, stained and threadbare. A dirty white singlet hangs limply over a patched-together skirt. The material seems awkward on her lithe frame. Barefoot. She looks so vastly different from her clean, coordinated, green school uniform replete with white socks and lace-up black brogues. It’s hard to believe she is the same girl from an hour ago. Her name is Mariama. It means ‘gift from God’. She gives me a glorious smile and takes my hand.
Family hub: the cooking shelter. Photo: Nina Ginsberg.
Mariama leads me to a shelter to meet her family. There are many of these ‘family clusters’ around here – hidden, unknown, near-inaccessible. ‘Here’ is a grouplet of three ‘dirty brick’ huts. I’m surrounded by extreme poverty. The huts are dotted around a cleared centre which is the hub of all family life. In the middle is the cooking place. Under a corrugated iron roof held up by poles, I take my lead from the older women and join them around the open fire pit.
Mariama is animated as she tells the women about me. They smile while looking me up and down. Small groups of young children appear and mill around, watching, listening, whispering, giggling. Some of the kids sit on their mothers and watch the braver ones sit near me. An overheated dog snoozes as a wretched little chick walks over it. A rubbish pile smoulders nearby. An assembly line of freshly made mud bricks is drying off to the right, and a collection of single-use alcohol sachets are littered on the left. Flies buzz. Everywhere I look, skin sparkles as sunlight catches diamonds of sweat. The fragrant, sweet smell of red palm oil simmering in a cauldron wafts through the compound. I hear birds calling in the surrounding bush. Clumps of overgrown tallgrass tower at the edge of the clearing and rustle noisily in the wind. The women are clicking their tongues, quipping in Temne, and raising their eyebrows in my direction. They find me amusing. I sit down quietly on the closest stone.
Snoozing dog and wretched chick. Photo: Nina Ginsberg.
Mariama’s English is good and she translates our introductions, adding explanations and embellishments freely. We chat, suspended in time. Refreshments materialise. We talk about family, life and women’s business. After a while, I feel a shift in the mood. The conversation peeters out. Silence. I wait. Mariama’s mother nods to her daughter, who turns to me with a massive smile. Something has transpired, but I’m not sure what. I hold the moment, and the other women do the same.
Mama looks directly at me. I meet her gaze and hold, watching her intently. She has my full attention. She nods at me then closes her eyes. I watch her breathe. Time flattens. Tenderly and gently, Mama starts to clap. Refrain. Then she starts to sing in Temne. Lowly evanescence. Her lilt is stirring and ephemeral. The Aunties are nodding. The wind stops to listen. Mama’s voice is clear as it reaches out, rising and falling, pouring in and spilling over, flowing between and rippling through. I feel her voice seep into my bones. The Aunties join in. Snoozing dog opens an eye, sighs contentedly, and returns to slumber. The singing is rich and resonating, full of emotion and vitality. My heart pines. The timbre is achingly melodious. I listen, transfixed. After a few rounds, the lyrics change. I hear my name, ‘Nina’, included. My scalp tingles. All the women watch me as they increase in volume and enthusiasm. I am barely breathing. Mariama is singing too. She turns to me with bright eyes – what an angelic gift. The singing is still building. I feel what she is going to say before she says it. I don’t need words to know what is happening. ‘It’s for you’ she says, ‘they are singing you in.’
Alfred (L), Kadi, Deborah, Isata (middle R), Nina and Stylish (R). Isata’s bike shop Makeni, Sierra Leone. Feb 2020.
Happy New Year all!
I hope you have been enjoying your time on and off the bike – and gearing up for another productive year!
Regular readers know that BCC is not your average mainstream cycling blog ….. it is anything but!
For my first post of 2021, I am revisiting this blog’s manifesto and ongoing guiding commitment to support a range of bike experiences that celebrating inclusion and diversity.
This blog promotes positive and inclusive bike experiences
This blog’s key focus is to share stories where bicycles create positive community and environmental change.
The content you find here covers my bicycle Ph.D. (readings, research, ideas) as well as awesome bike-focused people, places, groups, and events from Australia and around the world.
This blog’s motto is: Have fun, rides bikes, do good.
Here at Bicycles Create Change (BCC), I talk a lot about gender, sustainability, dogs/animals, community, inclusion, social justice, access for all, recycling, supporting outliers, education, families, kids, modified bikes for diff-abilities, people over 60, people under 15, art bikes, bicycle community groups, returned war veterans, gardening, school/education, mobility, creativity and art, making your own trails and riding around your local community. Type keywords into the blog search to see full posts.
This blog brings you stories from around the world
Over the years we have travelled far and wide: Afghanistan, South Korea, India, Tibet, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, South Africa, China, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Uganda, Isreal, Belize, Japan, Gambia, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, The Cook Islands, Laos, Brazil, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, Iraq, Mexico, Colombia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Argentina, the Himalayas, Finland, Sudan, Ghana, Vietnam, Uruguay, Darfur, Nepal, Ethiopia, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Tanzania, and internally displaced people (IDP – ‘refugee’) camps around the world….to name a few… type keywords into the blog search to see full posts for these places.
…yes there is an incredibly rich bicycling world outside Europe and North America!
In Australia, we have visited all the major cities – Brisbane (where I am now based) Melbourne (my home town), Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Hobart, Canberra, Alice Springs) and their awesome bicycling adventures.
We have also traveled more widely in Australia to showcase rural locations and places outside big urban cities like: Kunnanurra (WA), Ballarat (VIC), Adelaide Hills (SA), Lismore (QLD), Dubbo (NSW), Bendigo (VIC), Woodfordia (QLD), North & South Spit Area (Sunshine Coast, QLD), Chewton, (regional VIC), Woodend (VIC), Goldfields district (regional VIC), and bike rides spanning the full East Coast of Australia. (*Epic!*).
As an alternative to the oversaturation of hegemonic, mainstream, consumer-based, profit-driven, western-English speaking-heterosexual-male-white-wealthy-middle aged-fit-able bodied-road riding-elitist-centric news and blog sites you can get any(every)where, this blog’s purview has always delighted a range of different biking experiences that shows a greater diversity of bicycling experiences.
So on this blog, I talk about ‘biking’ – not ‘cycling’.
At BCC, I’ve covered a huge range of awesome community bike-themed events you won’t find collated elsewhere, like: The Kurilpa Derby, The Yarn Ride, The Brisbane Big Push, Bike Hack, Climate Action Rallies, Bike Art Exhibitions, ANZAC Day Commemorations, 6-Day Brisbane (track sprint competition), Halloween Rides, National Sustainability Festivals, Brisbane Bike Film Festival, 3Plus3 MTB, NAIDOC Week bike events, Ride the Night events, Chicks Who Ride Bikes (CWRB) events, Melburn Roubaix, Bike Rave Melburn: Pink Flamingo Edition, Witches Rides, Alley Cat Races, Animals on Bikes Art Trails, Bayview Blast, the annual, all-female Chicks in the Sticks MTB event, Bike Palooza, Full Moon Rides, National Bike Week, Ride to Work events, Holi Festival, Commonwealth Games MTB, Sustainable Living Festivals, Woodford Folk Festival, Style over Speed rides, Slow Rolls, Zombie Bike Rides … and heaps more (*phew*!). Type any of these keywords into the blog search to see full posts for these events.
And I’ve had lots of abstracts accepted, attended, followed up on, and presented at LOTS of conferences to share our story and learn more from others, like: Australian Walking and Cycling Conference (AWCC) (Adelaide, SA), Reconciling research paradoxes: Justice in a post-truth world (Brisbane, QLD), Bike Hack (Brisbane, QLD), English Australia National Conferences (Sydney, NSW) Bike Week (Brisbane, QLD), Australia Association for Research in Education (AARE) (Brisbane, QLD), Bicycle Network: Bike Futures (Melbourne, VIC), 8th International Cycling Saftey Conference (Brisbane, QLD), Bike Palooza (Bendigo, VIC), Re-Imaging Education for Democracy Summit (Brisbane, QLD), Freshlines Symposia (Brisbane, QLD), University English Centers Australia (UECA) Assessment Symposium (Brisbane, QLD), Pedagogies in the Wild Conference (Cape Town, South Africa), 10th Annual New Materialisms Conference of Reconfiguring Higher Education (Cape Town, South Africa), Asia Pacific Cyle Congress (Christchurch, NZ), International Cycling Conference (Germany), International Exhibition and Conference in Higher Education (IECHE) (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)…. and more (*double phew*!!). Type keywords into the blog search to see full posts for these conferences.
Promoting diverse perspectives and bikey lifeworlds
For over 6 years, I’ve worked hard to share a range of stories from around the world that centre on everyday people, community groups and places (not Aust, UK or USA) that are often underrepresented, unknown or unrecognized for the positive impact they are making with bicycles.
And this year, I will continue to share stories that are community-based, diverse, relatable and inspirational.
To kick off 2021 – I have dug into the archives to bring you a showcase of some of the remarkably diverse people and projects I have shared in the past.
Here’s are a few diversity posts you should check out if you missed them:
As I was preparing this post and going back over these older stories (and so many more from the blog), it filled me with immense satisfaction. I love that this blog continues to provide a platform for incredible bike stories to be shared and celebrated that would otherwise remain relatively unknown – and I’m looking forward to continuing this mission in 2021!
There are many reasons why I love where I’m currently living and riding. I live on Narlang Quandamooka land which is Morton Bayside 25 km out of Brisbane (AUST).
In my neighbourhood, we have fantastic bayside foreshore pathways, heritage-listed Mangrove reserves, native bushland and swathes of green parklands. The natural environment was a definitive reason for us choosing to live here.
I’m often out and about on my bike and I love to meet people who are doing the same.
While I’m in the throes of data analysis and working hard on my PhD bicycle research, it feels even more important to keep connected with the two-wheeled community.
I have a number of ongoing side projects that I like to keep percolating. My Instagram #Bikes_CISTA project is one I have not updated in a while due to COVID and I was delighted to have the opportunity to do so recently.
This is an ongoing project I started in February 2017.
The ‘CISTA’ acronym of #Bikes_CISTA stands for Cycling Interspecies Team of Awesomeness.
The Cycling Interspecies Team of Awesomeness (or Bikes_CISTA) Project is a photographic collection of encounters I’ve had with biking strangers while riding Leki (my flower bike) around my neighbourhood. It features people I spontaneously see, introduce myself to, have a chat with and invite them to join ‘the team’ (completely optional).
The eligibility for a #Bikes_CISTA invite requires:
at least one person
at least one dog
at least one bike
all are happy to stop and have a chat with me
are happy for me to share their photo and their CISTA story
It is a great way to keep me connected to my community, actively meet new people and celebrate one of the most important (non-religious) ‘holy trinities’ of being a positive and active community member that I hold near and dear: being on bikes, being with dogs and being outside enjoying nature and community….and all this at once.
COVID put a serious dent in #Bikes_CISTA activities. The last entry was #Bikes_CISTA #49 on November 2019. Considering at start of 2020 I was in West Africa for fieldwork and then COVID hit – I suppose no updates is actually quite reasonable! Since then, I haven’t given it much thought until this week I was presented with a golden #Bikes_CISTA opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.
So without further ado – meet John, his bike, Diesel and Roxy … who are our #Bikes _CISTA #50!
Meet John, his bike, Diesel and Roxy – #Bikes_CISTA
I was out walking Zoe during a PhD study break and I saw this awesome team riding towards me. The trailer caught my eye. Spontaneously I blurted out something to John as he rode toward me about how cool the trailer was and how great it was to see him and the dogs out on two wheels.
To my delight, John was happy to stop and have a chat – woo-hoo!
Diesel is the larger white bitsa in the front and Roxy is in the back. These two dynamos are rescue dogs and a very happy misfit pair – what a great outcome for all!
John lives in Cleveland and often rides Diesel and Roxy along the Morton Bay Cycleway for a regular cruisey Cleveland-Thornside-Lota-Manly return ride.
John’s dog trailer is simple but effective. He has modified a standard trailer setup to include shade ontop and Roxy’s basket on the end. He has to augment the axel a little to redistribute the weight for the two pooches.
There are rubber insulated mats on the floor plus a little extra cushioning for puppy comfort.
I was interested to hear he had put some barrier up around the bottom of the tray to make sure wayward tails didn’t get knocked about or accidentally caught in wheels, which was a particularly considerate addition.
We chatted happily in the afternoon sun about bikes, dogs, riding with dogs and riding this local route – all while the puppies watched on.
I love that John was wearing a ‘No bad dogs’ T-shirt as well!
Morton Bay Cycleway. Image: Visit Brisbane
Funnily enough the very next day after meeting this crew, I saw them again while riding Leki along the foreshore. I was cruising past a busy tourist area and saw John’s bike parked under a tree.
I stopped and left my business card, but then I saw John walking Diesel and Roxy a little further on. How lucky!
So we stopped for another chat. Hooray!
This dual interaction made me so happy. I loved the opportunistic randomness of the initial connection which was fun and interesting and genuine – and then to have it reinforced the very next day was just lovely.
I’ll be keeping my eyes open for this fantastic #Bikes_CISTA team from now on.
It makes me happy to know there are awesome bike-people-dogs like this cruising around my community spreading positivity, good company, and wholeheartedly celebrating the #Bikes_CISTA philosophy in their own engaging way.
Happy return #Bikes_CISTA teams!
Adorable! Diesel (L) and Roxy (R) ready to ‘ride on dad!’
The creator of this bespoke, hand-made bike is Japanese student Enji. Enji is studying at the Tokyo College of Cycle Design ( I know ..right!! A whole school for studying bicycle design!!) and this working bike was his final graduating project.
Enji wanted to restyling the old traditional handicraft of Kitsuregoshi (lattice work) into the bike build.
The handcrafted bicycle has been carefully thought-out from concept to finish, with the saddle, handlebars, tires and frame all designed to complement the star of the creation that sits in the middle of the piece: the lattice panel.
Lattice work like this is known as kitsuregoshi in Japan. This centuries-old woodworking craft can be seen in sliding door panels in traditional Japanese rooms, and on walls beneath the roofs of shrine buildings.
Enji has taken inspiration from the word kitsuregoshi, naming his bicycle Kitsure, the “Traditional Japan Bicycle.”
The lattice panel can be popped out like a shoji sliding door, so it’s possible for a different design to be mounted in its place in future.
And it’s not just the lattice section that’s impressive, as the entire frame of the bicycle was also made from scratch and melded together to make his vision a reality.
Image: Sonar News 24
When Enji shared his bike on via Twitter @enjiblossomlily, it went viral with over 13,000 retweets and more than 73,000 likes in just one day.
Enji’s bicycle was part of his graduating cohort display at Tokyo College of Cycle Design. This college is a vocational school located in the Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward where students study the design, maintenance and building of bicycles.
With Japan recently championing innovative designs like the Walking Bicycle Club, we can only hope to see more bikes like Enji’s Kiture make their way onto streets of Tokyo and beyond.
Initially, it was his bike drawing that caught my eye. I ended up reading the article and appreciated Ian’s whimsical interaction with a flock of bicycles – one of which calls out to him – and the ensuing adventure of agency and experience he goes on as a result of his two-wheeled friend(?) encounter.
What first looked like an entertaining reflection of becoming a new dad, turned into an exploration of what it is to be, and relate to the world, both for human bodies and a non-human bodies.
An interesting provocation.
My bike PhD research uses New Materialism as its ontological framing – and this article does a great job of translating in simple terms some of the embodied, somatic and affective intensities inherent in New Materialism (but in a more relatable and less-academic jargoned way).
I’ve included a few extracts of Ian’s interactions with the bike from the full article (below) so you can get a sense of writing style and focus. many of the moments will be familiar to riders – and I love the way that bikey actually speaks to Ian throughout. It is well worth reading the whole account to get the flow of what happens during the journey.
I’d love to see more exploratory writing like this being shared more widely: bike focused writing that weaves together imagination, encounters, bikes (of course) and aspects of daily life.
‘Worlding’ is a New Materialist approach that attunes to the discursive-material-affective mircopoltics of everyday life. It is an approach I use for my PhD and I share some of my own and other people worldings here on this blog. So it is reassuring to see other creators using this approach as well.
I think it paints a much richer picture of life, people and what it is to be and relate in/to world with, and through bicycles – and it also gives me inspiration as I write up my PhD data analysis. Thanks Ian Cheng!
Image: Ian Cheng
You walk by a flock of bicycles. One calls out to you. Bikey. You like Bikey’s reputation but you’re not sure about its brains. Bikey follows beside you.
“Nice dogs. Where are you headed today?” “Don’t need a ride today thanks.” “Can I walk with you?” “I’m not in the mood…to talk to a bike.” “No problem I’ve got a classic bike mode.” “The twins get scared of you bikes.” “I’ve done 731 dog walks in my lifetime.” “You’ve driven this parkway before?” “Yes once at dawn today. There’s some features I think you’ll like.”
______________
A little boy darts across your path. Bikey crashes into him.
“Bikey, you could have swerved!” “I would have hit your twin dogs if I swerved.” “Thank you for that consideration…but you hit a human boy!” “It was an easy choice.” “Do you believe dogs are worth more than a human boy?” “This morning, yes. My alignment with you, and therefore your dogs, is worth crashing into that boy at low velocity.” “What if that boy is the next Einstein?” “That’s too many malignments deep for me to think about. I’m just a bike.”
You realize how significantly better you are than Bikey at imagining potential malignments. Some say that the open-ended activity of imagining new Alignment and Malignment Events is the indivisible remainder of the human spirit after automation. A person is still the least worst unit of interoperability between arbitrary worlds. But sometimes you see too many worlds deep. And this stops you from taking any actions at all. It’s times like this when you wonder if beings like Bikey will inherit the Earth because their worry has limits.
_________________
“Easy for you to say. The World of Bikey only has to worry about its next ride.” “Yes exactly. I’m a bike. I’m not obligated to play a part in every world that touches me.” “You know by walking together, we begin to create a little world too. A relationship. Do you feel any responsibility to be a part of that? You can’t possibly only live in Bikey’s World.” “My experience with some riders is if we keep doing rides repeatedly it can become its own little world. With others I never see them again and that’s the end of that.” “But if you’re not holding agency in other worlds for any significant amount of time, you’re always going to be blind to deeper alignments and malignments that impact other worlds. That’s why I can’t really trust you.” “I can take you safely to your destination with 99% accuracy.” “But you can’t if you hit a boy along the way!” “I have learned from the incident. Next time I know how much it upsets a rider like you. I learned you might want to get involved in the malignment victim’s world and that makes you feel even worse.” “So you only wish to see things from the perch of Bikey’s World.” “My Quality of Agency is majority anchored in the World of Bikey.” “Don’t you get sick of being a bike all the time?” “My world is…a domain of growing relevance.”
———————–
The boy starts chasing after you. You decelerate Bikey to meet him. “Hey you! Your bike hit me!” “This isn’t my bike. I’m sorry again…on behalf of the bike.” “Your bike prioritized your dogs over me. You share a world with it. You’re even riding it now. Don’t play dumb!” “You seem upset about something else. Did something bad just happen in another world of yours?” “Shut up Thinky.” “Excuse me little boy?” “Little boy? I’m a genius. You think too much. Now give me one of your dogs. They’re clones I can tell. It’s only fair!” “Look, you laughed it off and traded your thetan knives for a split something remember…” “Give me a dog or else I’ll mark a curse on you! I’ll ruin you and every world you ever–“
“Yaohan get over here!!!” The boy’s mother appears, furious at him. Something about their bank accounts.
Bikey starts accelerating on its own. You don’t resist. You still feel bad for the boy in ways Bikey never has to. You wonder if Quality of Agency will prove to be the ultimate unsolvable inequity among human beings.
__________________
You dismount Bikey at your driveway. “Thanks Bikey.” “Any comments?” “You’re a curious bike worth knowing. Five stars.” “Thanks. If you ever want to try to change my mind you’ll have to ride me again!”
Bikey zooms off. The Soul of Los Angeles blesses you for trying its new parkway. The floating light plays with your dogs at your doorway. Bob is back online knocking on your brain with its interpretation of jdioqwdjv. Your Hacker and Emissary demons are tired and need a break. Your Director and Cartoonist are ready to work. Does everything have to be so alive now? Does everything have to feel so damn enchanting?
For August, we have a 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. Laura Fisher is a post-doctoral research fellow at Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney). Originally published in long format in Artlink, the five projects Laura details are examples not only of how bicycles create positive social (and other) change, but how this achieved utilizing the arts and performance. In this first instalment, Laura describes the importance and impact of one ofAi Weiwei’s most iconic pieces ‘Forever’. Enjoy! NG.
The bicycle as dissident object: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Forever’
One of the centrepieces of Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei at the National Gallery of Victoria is a fresh iteration of Ai’s Forever sculpture. Located in the foyer, the sculpture consists of a towering arch of over 1,500 interconnected bicycles, all uniformly produced to a minimalist design. The Forever series is now among Ai’s most known works, having been exhibited in many configurations in museums and public spaces in London, Taiwan, Taipei, Venice and Toronto and elsewhere. The namesake is China’s Yong Jiu (which translates as“Forever”) brand of bicycle.
Established in the 1940s, the prized Forever brand dominated China’s cycling culture for several decades before the car became more widely used. For Ai there is a tainted nostalgia about the Forever bicycle. In the remote village where he was raised after his father – an enlightened and popular poet – was exiled from Beijing, the bicycle was not only needed for travel but for transporting things. It was also out of reach to all but the well-off, a high status object of intense desire for a child like Ai living in poverty.
Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles, 2015, stainless steel bicycle frames. Courtesy Ai Weiwei and Lisson Gallery, London
In the first version of the work (in 2003) Ai suspended real Forever bicycles in a circle, and removed the chains, handlebars, pedals and seats. Eliminating these features set him on a path of abstraction, which in turn allowed him to introduce ambiguity to the object and play with patternation. Subsequent versions of the work left the readymade quality of the original behind and embraced a manufactured aesthetic, with the sculptures acquiring spectacular architectural proportions.
The bicycles seem to be self-propagating as grand crystalline structures, yet they are strikingly immobilised: ossified in gleaming stainless steel. In light of Ai’s ongoing critique of the constraints on liberty and individuality in China, it is hard not to interpret Forever as a potent vision of arrested movement, and its mass-produced elements as a metaphor for a particular kind of circumscribed sociality.
With Flowers
A more lo-fi object and performance that attests to the importance of bicycles (and flowers) to this critique is Ai’s With Flowers. Daily, from 30 November 2013, Ai placed fresh flowers into the basket of a bicycle leaning on a tree outside his Beijing studio gate to protest the confiscation of his passport (in 2011), and documented the bouquets on Flickr. His passport was finally returned in July 2015.
The National Gallery of Victoria’s installation is just the most recent in a long line of commissions and adaptations of Forever. And you might ask why the work has had such longevity. While it is no doubt a testament to Ai’s growing fame, it surely also says something about the bicycle’s symbolic currency at this historical moment.
In the coming years, the bicycle is likely to be a significant gauge of our cities’ progress towards finding a more sustainable equilibrium and it is a very tangible instance of the idea that a personal choice, when embraced en masse, can translate swiftly into extraordinary collective good. In this light, the scaled-up Forever seems to be suggestive of the grand promise associated with this disarmingly simple tool of urban transformation.
What is striking about the bicycle in the age of electronics is that it is an honest machine: its means of operating are transparent and its action truthfully felt. As Ai himself points out “They’re designated for the body and operated by your body. There are few things today that are like that”.
As a machine comprising simple cogs and wheels that efficiently convert human energy into movement, the bicycle has unique kinetic and haptic qualities that lend themselves to aesthetic investigation.
Thus, while Ai’s bicycles are polished and quiescent, many other artists have employed the bicycle’s movement to activate different kinds of individual and social behaviour – which is what we will be exploring in the next post!
Ai Weiwei – Forever Bicycles, (2011). Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2012). Image: Phaidon
Laura Fisher is a post-doctoral research fellow at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. In October 2015 she co-curated Bespoke City with Sabrina Sokalik at UNSW Art & Design, a one night exhibition featuring over 20 practitioners celebrating the bicycle through interactive installations, sculpture, video, design innovation, fashion and craft. This event was part of Veloscape, an ongoing art–research project exploring the emotional and sensory dimensions of cycling in Sydney.
