[Thanks to ride leader Jill for reporting on Monday’s Dandy Warhols Ride, via the Shift list. See bottom of post for a video of the ride!]

It took an entire day to recover from the marathon Dandy Warhols ride. What was planned to be about a 2-hour event instead turned into about a 7-hour odyssey when Brent and Zia from the band joined us.

The fun began with a short introduction, then we visited the spot where “Welcome to the Monkey House” was recorded. We stopped by Plan B who graciously showed some of the Warhols videos to set up the rest of the ride, and Brent and Zia gave us the backstory on each.

Then we rode through downtown, seeing sites where the band recorded videos and played their first show, hearing stories from Zia about meeting and collaborating with David Bowie, what a nice guy Tom Petty is, and other tales.

When we pulled up to their current recording studio and practice space, we were surprised by being given a complete tour, including the kitchen with permanently attached, intentionally crooked tables (to match the floor) and the gold record hallway. Zia surprised us again with swag for everyone and by supplying the prizes for the trivia contest, which was held next at Slabtown.

After trivia, Zia and Brent invited us to continue the night at a bar on Albina, so on we went. The night ended with all those heading to southeast riding home together around 2 a.m., stopping briefly to fix Brent’s 40-year-old broken chain. Fortunately not one but TWO ride participants had a chain tool on them.

Everyone had a blast and the band members could not have been friendlier to us.

Thanks to Jeff Bernards for co-organizing and coming up with the great ideas.

There are 3 sets of photos up so far: on the Dandy Warhols website, a ride participants’ Flickr page, and from co-organizer Jeff Bernards.

Check out this video that was made of the ride:

[This report provided by Pun-ishment ride leader Matt Picio, via the Shift list.]

About 40 people showed up last evening for the Pun-ishment ride, expecting games, prizes, and bad puns. They got the last one, and a promise of a ride to a secret mystery destination, but the ride ran
late and the mystery destination was changed to Mississippi Avenue rather than riding way out into north Portland.

At that point, the lack of good puns, prizes, games, and the mystery destination made this officially the Unmet Expectations Ride.

Despite all this, the attendees had a lot of fun on the 9.5 mile route, enjoying food at the carts on 12th & Hawthorne along with the folks on the Remedial Ride, pizza and beer at Laurelwood Pizza, and more drinks at Amnesia – proving one of the truisms of Pedalpalooza: that it really doesn’t matter what the ride is about or where it goes so long as everyone has fun and gets a chance to socialize and meet
new people.

It also helps when you stop the entire ride in front of some guy’s house when he’s walking up to it to go home.

I did manage to subject everyone to a reign of bad puns in kingly fashion. I am not the Duke of wit nor the Count of charm – nor the Earl (I don’t wear bowties) (wait a sec – does that mean I was NOT the
man of the blumenaur?)

If that last paragraph nearly caused you to hurl, then you should be glad you missed the ride, but we had loads of fun!

Last night in Overlook Park, about 16 men and women, wearing everything from short skirts to spandex, learned the rudiments of a newly emerging martial art form: Bikendo.

Our teacher was Nature Boy, a longtime practitioner of karate and tai chi. He had the idea to develop a specific self defense technique for people who ride bikes, using the bicycle itself as a tool for fending off attack. He has been working on creating particular techniques using bicycles for several months. Last night was the form’s public debut.

We learned how to stand properly, alone and then with our bikes. Then we learned to use our bikes as a shield, and practiced dismounting and grappling. Nature Boy walked through the group correcting stances and giving suggestions. Along with experienced assistants, he demonstrated a couple of techniques for flipping an assailant over your rear wheel — see the photos below for a better idea of what that looked like.