After a day inside the bike shop I decided to bike along false creek,  and check out the new Burrard Street Bridge bike lane before heading the Bike-In-Movie at the MOV (Museum of Vancouver).

It was an awesome ride across the bridge with a great view of the inlet and plenty of space to safely maneuver my Tree.  It was so enjoyable that I forgot to take a photo while traveling over the bridge.  So once I got to the other side, I had a nice piece of cake from the girls of the VACC.  Then I had to ride over the bridge again, just to get a photo!

Arriving at Vanier Park I ran into David Niddrie, Photo Editor of Momentum Magazine and I joked about having to ride the bridge twice just to get the photo. Apparently I wasn’t the only as David had to travel the bridge twice as well.

We were both there for the Museum of Vancouver Bike-in-Movie, The Triplets of Belleville. It was a somewhat cool and cloudy night on the shores of English Bay, but I was impressed with the large crowd that showed up. Unlike car traffic that can only arrive from the parking lot, people on bikes were coming in from all directions – from the street, the seawall and of course from the Burrard Bridge.

I rented some blanket real estate from the VACC crew and enjoyed the movie. It was pretty awesome art flick with some inside bike jokes I wouldn’t have understood as little as a few months ago. I saw another Tree at the movie, and meant to ask the owner how he enjoyed it, but food had arrived and I was hungry!

Another strange occurrence happen when the movie was over and 300+ cyclist left all at once. There wasn’t a huge traffic jam. When I arrived at Burrard and Cypress there were 20 cyclists who were stopped at the light. Could you imagine what that would have been like with car traffic?

So I made my third trip over the bridge in as many hours, and even at this time of night I felt completely comfortable traveling over the bridge and realized how important this was to the future of bike commuting in Vancouver.

Category: Events, News

Tags: Advocacy, Burrard Street Bridge, car free, commuter, Kitsilano, Movie, museum

The whirlwind trip The Tree has been on this spring just got a little bit more historic.

The Tree is on display at the newly branded Museum of Vancouver (the MOV; Formerly the Vancouver Museum) and their new show Velo-City: Vancouver and the Bicycle Revolution.

The Tree was chosen by Nick Rust from Propellor Design who heard about The Tree through the grapevine and thought it was an awesome project. He approached Autumn about having the bike as part of the show.

“We were blown away Nick asked us to have our bike as part of the show and though it would be awesome to be part of the exhibit.” said Autumn.

Autumn dolled up a large Tree with the disc brake upgrade, some lights and a pannier. She jumped on board putting foot to peddle(s) and headed to Kitsilano, the bikes new home for the next six months.

The Opening

The gang from the shop took off a little late and hit the 10th street bike route, we had a hilarious time biking across town trying to race each other on the hills. Darcy had his old school, three-speed Raleigh and was giving us gear heads a run for our money.

We then turned down the Cypress Avenue bike route and were welcomed by a cool breeze and a drop in temperature as we neared the ocean shore next to the venerable Museum.

We were impressed with the red carpet treatment by the Bike Valet. While we dropped off our bikes with Shera Kelly, a Bike Valet attendant, Jaimie had a little photo shoot with Rebecca Blissett outside the museum. Who knew we were so popular?

Walking into the exhibit I was completely impressed with the curator of the exhibit, from 1980’s road racing jerseys, to the exceptional quality of Tito Precott “Three Wheeled Method of Convenance” and a special performance of the BCclettes to cap the night off.

I kept on returning to the tree, trying to get a decent photo. Trying to shoot a black bike against a black room with a point and shoot camera is darn harder than you might think. But it allowed me to see a array of different people checking out our little creation.

It was far from the flashiest bike, the most expensive cycle, or most popular exhibit at the opening, but what I did hear was a lot of people coming by taking a closer look at the frame, inspecting the components, making subtle comments to friends about how cool the concept of our bike was.

Of course we are somewhat preaching to the converted at the opening of a bike show where the bike valet is as full as the parking lot.

This little project is barely into its first month and yet we’re already getting a huge and equally important positive response to our first cycle. So please drop by the museum, check out the choppers, the fixies, and the chalk murals. It is a great show and we could not be prouder to be a part of it.

Category: Events, News

Tags: Advocacy, art, BCclettes, bike, commuter, culture, exhibit, Kitsilano, museum, red carpet, sustainable, Tree bike