Riding Dirty, No Doubt

The only wooden section of the Patullo Bridge was catastrophically damaged in a fire last week. They have officially closed the bridge to all traffic. Now, this should hardly affect most of us who live in the City of Vancouver and ride bikes, as the bridge crosses the Fraser River from New Westminster to Surrey - not to mention it's one of the shittier bridges in town for riding across, with no guard rail and a lot of truck traffic.

But somehow it does affect us in the city: "Bicycle access on SkyTrain is suspended on all lines until further notice due to capacity limitations." What the hell!? Unbeknownst to my defiance, I took the tall bike on its first train ride to Surrey on Monday. I merely rode my bike to the train station and was late enough for class that I decided to take the bike with me.

The next day I went with the bus, as I didn't need to go to work after class. At the Frances St bus stop, I run into none other than Randy Moffat, local (it doesn't really get much more local) BMX ripper. He mentions that he's headed to work, for some reason I assumed further west in Vancouver. We have a quick conversation and I leave him at the front of the bus to watch his bike while I get out of the way of the southbound bus congestion with my courier bag full of drawing gear.

I find a spot on the train, and notice that Randy is also headed east. After a few minutes, I headed up to talk to him again. He's working in Burnaby, and using his bike to get to and from the bus and train. We talk about the current ice-fog epidemic, and then I mention that bikes are banned from the train right now, a fact that Randy was also unaware of. Here's the bike check of Randy's current setup: all black with green spokes, brakeless, super wide bars. Reminds me of another Randy...

Two bikes worthy of discussion, ridin' dirty on the Skytrain. Talking to Randy inspired me to go riding even though it's cold and foggy out. I've come to the conclusion that riding BMX with music, talking to your friends occasionally, is the way to go.

I spent at least an hour at Plaza that afternoon, working on my wall rides and manuals, mostly hitting the far north line. I will soon have wall tail taps within my grasp. This photo of that "beginner" wall ride spot at Plaza courtesy of Chicago race organizer and BMXer Matt Sipple, who was in town last week checking out what we've got to offer, including the green green forest of North Van with myself and his girl Emily.

My instructor had seen the tall on Monday, and on Tuesday mentioned I could bring the bike in as a drawing subject. Hmm, could I possibly bring another bike from the collection instead? Another bike worthy of discussion? I shall report back on this, if it ends up as a photo of one of my bikes in an art class. Could end up riding dirty on the train again soon if they don't lift the ban.

I leave this one with a photo of the day after that first BMX ride in oh-too-long. The girls at the office were not nearly as stoked on this as I was.