tour de fat redux and last night's ride report

omigosh. san francisco is amazing. 5lowershop is amazing. our coperformers on tour de fat are amazing. luv luv luv.

friday evening we rolled in to enthusiastic 5lowershop dwellers. i haven't been here before, but everyone's been warm and welcoming. vortex, chaos, pulse and trouble were running around shrieking and hugging every friendly face we met.

after runthroughs in the farmers market parking lot and attempts to destroy a parked car there, we rolled back to the 5lowershop in the company of lulu (one of the drivers), bonsai (a girl from oakland with a queue and an ambulance) and several others. there's so many names to remember! we changed clothes and rode 20s up into the mission to a bar called the knockout where one of trouble's friends was working, crush and chaos taking turns riding on the pegs of the pacemaker after chaos' bike broke down a mile away from 5lowershop.

the bar was a little lame, but we left flyers for our critical mass show and ate burritos while we waited a few minutes. then we rode around the corner and worked our way into circus contraption's show (no circus, just the band, but sweet sweet sweet!). they played pink elephants on parade (one of my favorite songs of all time) among other things and we danced danced danced. vortex got us on their guestlist for their shows at cellspace the next two nights and we rode back to the warehouse to showers and sleep.

saturday morning we woke up bright and early and blinged up before hauling gear to a vacant parking lot across the street from the market and had a single runthrough (pack 'em in when you can, but don't wear yourself out!) for the marketgoers. then we loaded up in the bus and ate danger's amazing cheezy eggy goodness on the way to golden gate park. we found out the water tank for the sink doesn't have a cap, so sploosh all over the place! water everywhere! chaos and pulse fit the makeshift cap on and we wiped up the water on the floor.

golden gate park is beautiful. there's a greenhouse that looks like the taj mahal, wonderfully lndscaped gardens and people everywhere using the park (as they should) on a wonderfully clear summer day.

we rolled into the festival, scoped out the stage (the multilayered show plan didn't work out due to mike stands and monitors.... oh well) and were then set free!

handsome little devils were on first and their show was wonderful. tight, theatrical and with some amazing tricks. they didn't have (much) live music, but their track list was great and their act was seamless.

then some sort of jam band played (?) and then circus contraption went on.

circus contraption had a completely different show than what we'd seen the night before. didn't have a chance to catch much of it, but one highlight was their poodle act... three grown women dressed as pink poodles, doing acrobalancing, playing violin and acting like, well, poodles. it was wonderful! we couldn't catch any more than that because we had some setting up to do.

we helped danger set up the merch booth and prepped ourselves to go on. dare i say it was our largest performance to date? i believe it was. the sound guy was playing it by ear and spot on with the levels. we weren't perfect, but danced as true professionals would. hooray! the crowd raved!

afterwards we ran all the equipment back to the bus and trouble, standard d, feral and i raced back to sing with the tires of fire choir. we sang signed, sealed, delivered and this little bike of mine to the crowd that was still high on the possibility of minibike dance.

after the festival was pretty much over, we hung out at the bus, playing oldies and enjoying a pedal powered barbeque towed by an oakland rider. a group of marching drums came around and a guy from cyclecide played bugle, i played flute, a homebum played harmonica and noah of handsome little devils spinned poi. we all danced. then it was loadup and back to the 5lowershop, narrowly missing crazed minivan drivers (lightning sr. has nerves of steel).

got back and unloaded bikes as fast as humanly possible and went back out to cellspace where circus contraption was playing a show. we were late and only got to see the second half, but amazing! yea! on the guestlist so no money wasted. thank you circus contraption!

after that, we rode on down to a space called xenophobe (i think) and summer of cyclecide got us in. it was okay, but there were too many "sexy clowns" and it was all very burning man. there was a group of four dancers that did acrobalancing and pretzeled themselves in amazing ways but the space was hot and overcrowded and the spectators were rich, drugged and boorish. yuck. in a different setting the show could've been great. one of teh dancers came into the corner where i sat and was trying to get some water (after a ten-minute intensive dance) and the fat man wearing a blinky burning man pendant kept on telling her how great she was as if she were a goddess. i felt really bad for her.

after that, we powwowed in the parking lot and rode back to 5lowershop for sleep. this morning i got up and got a copy of the merry adventures of robin hood, pristine condition and 55 years old for a dollar. now, for the rest of my day off!