Helltown Helloween Alleycat Race: October 31, 2010

Recently my EP Cruiser was stolen, so I was "forced" to buy two new second hand bicycles. One was a cheaper version of my EP Cruiser that works almost as well but cost less than $100. The other bicycle is a used semi-competition road racer (now known as the EP Racer) that reminded me of a better, faster version of my original blue bicycle that so faithfully carried me around town my first two months (when it wasn't getting a flat tire or breaking down every two days).

Fast forward to some time last week when I noticed an advertisement for an Alleycat race in the window of one of my favourite bicycle shops - Nauss Bicycle Shop - in the North End (regular readers all know how I feel about North End Halifax). Not knowing what an Alleycat race was, I did some research and it appeared to be an informal type of open-road race started by Toronto cycle couriers in the late '80s, which has now spread around the world.

Apparently there are many different kinds of Alleycat races, and this particular race in which I was taking part had a courier theme. All the contestants would be given a list of "pick-up" and "drop-off" locations around HRM. We were free to choose our own path around the city, and could do the pick-ups or drops in any order we wanted. The winner would be the first person to complete all of the drops and then arrive at the finish location - The Old Mill bar in Dartmouth - a roughly 20-25 kilometre journey depending on which order you decided to hit the requisite checkpoints.

The race started in front of the Alexander Keith's Brewery near the Waterfront, Le Mans style, with every racer having to run across a busy street to his/her locked bicycle, unlock said bicycle, and then head off to his/her first destination. The boards in the picture above were quite slippery in the rain though, and more than one racer slipped on his backside.

If you're trying to follow along on Google Maps I suggest not bothering, though the checkpoints were mainly located in North End Halifax, but went as far south-west as Chocolate Lake (near the Northwest Arm), and as far east as Sullivan's Pond, in Dartmouth. Furthermore, if you're trying to imagine what an Alleycat race might look like, check out this video or this one (disclaimer: these videos are from a third-party and the views/riding techniques represented in them are not necessarily the same as those held/practised by EP Dave).

(Sweaty, exhausted, but none-the-less happy racers resting their aching legs at the "finish line.")

I may have finished DFL ("Dead Friggin' Last"), but that's okay because a) I had a blast, b) Alleycats are really all about participation and getting to the final destination to enjoy some food and drinks with your fellow competitors, who are by this point your good friends - you've all battled the four-wheeled murder/heart-disease machines together - and c) there's actually an award for DFL (I won a cow mug).

I can't wait for the next race, and the next chance to get back out on a bicycle and ride fast.

EP Bike Trip #3: Bike and Bean Cafe, French Village, Nova Scotia

For the last couple of Sundays, at church, one of the members of the congregation has been encouraging me to check out a network of trails west of Halifax that were converted from old rail road tracks.

Upon closer inspection on a map, I noticed that there were actually a number of multi-use trails west of Halifax that fit my friend's description, and since I was new and had no idea of what to expect, I selected the longest, most difficult one I could find - the 33 km BLT/St. Margaret's Bay Rails to Trails route.

The BLT/St. Margaret's Bay Rails to Trails route is a groomed, dirt/gravel trail that is maintained by a volunteer organization. While I wanted to travel the entire length of the route - and someday will, I was starting out from my home only an hour before sunset, and considering that the start of the trail system was a good 10 km away from my home to begin with, I decided to find a closer target. I settled on an interesting cafe that was once an old train station, the Bike and Bean, figuring that a cup of hot chocolate (the drink of choice for EPs) would be a great way to refresh and warm up before heading back home.

Unfortunately, when I finally arrived in the dark at the cafe, I found out that a) it closes at 5 PM (a half-hour before I even left my home), and b) even if I had made it there earlier it wasn't open on the day of my ride anyway.

(The trip wasn't an entire waste - I captured this impressive sunset along one of the many lakes alongside which the trail passes.)

Cold, hungry, and tired, I set back off into the night on the pitch black trail, trying to pedal as fast as I could to make it home quicker than the 2 hours it took me to reach the cafe originally. I could barely see where the edges of the trail were, but it was well maintained, and so I trusted my dim bicycle light and pedalled on... hard. I estimated that I was travelling anywhere from 35 km/hr - 40 km/hr on average.

When I finally did make it home, I could barely carry my bicycle up the stairs to my fourth floor apartment, where I only got one shoe untied, before collapsing on the floor from exhaustion and pain (my frozen wrists had taken an especially hard hammering on the ride). I am a determined EP though, if nothing else, and so now that I know where the Bike and Bean Cafe is, I will take my road bike out and follow a more direct route there on an Autumn weekend afternoon (I completed this last journey on a city commuter bike - my EP Cruiser).

Total distance travelled: 55+ km

Total time taken: 3.5 hours.

Hopscotch Urban Arts Festival: September 11, 2010

According to what I've read, Halifax once had a great hip-hop scene. Unfortunately, when many of its past up and coming artists "made it big", the rest of the hip-hop scene was left to pick up the pieces. This year "the scene" tried to do just that with the Hopscotch Urban Arts Festival.

(An unknown - to me - dancer gives a free "popping" lesson to some eager young students.)

All day long, for 9 hours from 1 to 10 PM on September 11th, there were free hip-hop workshops, free dance lessons, a 100 foot "art wall" graffiti competition, the first ever national break dancing competition in Atlantic Canada, and a free concert featuring Halifax hip-hop legends like the Juno Award winning Classified.

As expected, the Grand Parade where it was located featured what must have been the largest concentration of teenagers who look like they would steal your car in all of Halifax. (Seriously guys, your art is neat, but all joking aside Grandpa Ea-pea is here to say that you really need to pull up your pants, wear a belt, and put your caps on the right way round because you look ridiculous tripping over the crotch of your own trousers.)

Even more impressive was the announcement that the fantastic French urban art artists of Cellograff would be making their North American debut at this festival. Unlike most "graffiti" artists (I'm sure they don't like it being called graffiti, but there's only so many times I can type "urban art" in one post without hating myself), Cellograff do not paint on the side of some business owner's establishment or on one of CN's grain cars, but rather they use large sheets of cellophane plastic stretched out between two trees or street posts to create their unique masterpieces.

Quite frankly the whole thing was not really my bag, but it was impressive, and this rather well intentioned event would have been completely unknown to me had someone not thought to drop a flier in the basket of my EP Cruiser (my new bike), while I was busy volunteering for the Fringe Festival the night before. That's right, this great coming together of me and the Hopscotch festival was only possible because of this unknown canvasser. Score one for canvassing, score one for bike baskets, and more importantly score one for cycling.

Random Halifax Picture #9

This isn't really a random picture, it's my old bicycle. I purchased this second-hand, back in June, because I needed a quick way to get around. It wasn't much of a bike though, but as the website for the bike shop said, "it takes a special kind of bicycle to be a $100 bicycle", so I knew what I was getting in to before I bought it (for the record, it cost $150, but that's not much better). In fact one of the workers at Cyclesmith (not where I bought it) who had to fix the tire on it once told me, "my girlfriend had this same bike and it was horrible twenty years ago, so I can't imagine it's much better now."

Nevertheless, even though the seat post clamp wouldn't tighten properly, so I had to constantly pull it up at every red light, and the brakes didn't work at all during the rain, and the dérailleurs were constantly giving me issues, it was still my bike and I felt pretty close to it. It was also instrumental in helping me collect most of the pictures you've seen on this website up until now.

However, a couple of weeks ago I was going to see a friend, and the front tire exploded, and so did the tube. At the same time, the chain slipped off the front and jammed itself up in between the chain rings. That was the third blown tire on the bike in that one week alone, and after being told by someone at Cyclesmith that it needed about $400 worth of work done on it, I thought it wasn't worth it and decided to buy a new bicycle.

This picture is the last I ever saw of my bicycle after walking it over to donate to a North End community bike charity. I hope someone else has more success with it than I did.

For the record, my new bike is awesome. I also bought a rack on the back, and rigged up a "unique" basket for it. I have fenders to keep my shirt from getting muddy in the rain, and lights and a bell. In short, it's the ultimate EP Cruiser. I'll show a picture soon.