Bike Polo and Germany

Know what’s awesome about Germany? Polo courts that look like this:

And yes, the court pictured above in Giessen is exceptionally great – perfect size, good boards, and a smooth court surface that grips – but the point is that most cities (from big ones like Berlin, to small university cities like Giessen) in Germany have really awesome courts for polo. It might be related to the popularity of hockey/roller hockey, but that’s besides the point (also if hockey was the reason than Minnesota and Wisconsin should have the best courts in the States).

best seat in the house.

I think one of the major differences about polo courts in Germany  is that it isn’t just about the court, it’s about the whole infrastructure around the court. Most courts have a small building with bathrooms, a kitchen, storage area for goals, oftentimes lights AND if you’re lucky, it might also have a sound system. During tournaments you can normally camp next to the court, or nearby. All in all, it means that tournaments are super awesome, and pretty easy to organize considering that most things you need are already at the court.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly who owns the courts. I think most courts, especially the ones that are embedded within larger sports facilities, are owned by communal sports clubs. For example, in Heidelberg the polo club pays a small fee each year to use the court. But, after the first year or two of paying this fee, they officially become part of the organization of the facility, and then can allot money from the budget for bike polo to buy goals, balls, mallets, etc. Other courts are probably owned by city governments and roller hockey clubs. Imagine having a polo court (and a small house) that was nicely maintained by a city parks department in the states… yeeeeaaaaaa right. I think all this is related to Germans paying taxes to their city and federal governments (crazy concept), and in turn the city and government has money to provide public infrastructure solely for the use of bike polo… I mean they have money to build facilities the whole public can use for a variety of purposes. I know this rant is really meant for another place – but I’m just putting that idea out there.

Anyways. Since arriving in Germany I’ve played polo in 5 cities (Berlin, Hannover, Leipzig, Heidelberg  Giessen), and I’ve played 31 out of the last 56 days. And most of my time that I’m not spending playing polo, I’m probably thinking about it. Which is to say that the last two months have been a blast. This last weekend I went to Giessen where I played with a guy Martin from Dortmund and a rotating third player. We came in fifth of 12 teams, which was both very surprising and pretty cool (our original goal was top 20). This coming weekend I’m headed to Leipzig for Peppermint Polo, and I have high expectations that this might be the most fun tournament yet.

Anyways. Here are some pictures from Giessen. Check em out.

Here is a video of a recent panel discussion with female cyclists hosted by Velo Joy and The League of American Cyclists. 6 women talk about their experience riding, and give tips for people interested in getting involved with biking.

The moderator starts the discussion with two interesting statistics:

- Male bicycle commuters outnumber women 3 to 1 in NYC, and is about the same as the rest of the US.

- 60% of bicycle owners aged 17-28 are women.

That first number I’ve heard a lot before, and that number represents a situation that I really care about changing, but I’d never heard that second number before. Now I’m not sure what the relationship of bicycle owner to bicycle commuter is, and so it’s hard to know what that statistic really means. But I think the general idea is that young women are buying (and hopefully riding) bikes in larger numbers than older women, and in bigger numbers than men of the same age. I’m hopeful that in means we’ll soon see a day when men no longer outnumber women commuting to work.

Ovarian Psycos Documentary Trailer

If you haven’t checked out the Ovarian Psycos (slogan – Ovaries so big we don’t need no balls) you should watch this trailer, and then check their blog to read all the rad organizing they are doing in East LA.

Carishina en Bici Manifest

 

I was checking out the Carishina en Bici blog the other day, and came across this manifest they uploaded to express who they are, what they do, and how Carishina en Bici fits into how they envision a better world (translation below). I think it’s a creative way to summarize a lot of their ideals and optimism in one, easy to read flow-chart thing.

I could talk and write about Carishina en Bici just about all day, every day (check out this one, this one, or this one). I’m so proud of everything that this organization is, and all the work that they do to get more women riding in Quito. I can’t wait until I’m reunited with them (sometime soon I hope), and in the meantime I hope they all know I’m sending them long-distance bike love.

rough translation: Who are we? woman + bikes in quito ecuador = Carishina en Bici with no limits to age, religion, political tendencies  or nationalities. We are volunteers (and want to keep being volunteers) that dream that bikes as a mode of transportation have the capacity to empower women. 1. We want to spread joy, independence, and liberty (the fun is between your legs) to many, many women. 2. We want to create a just and humane society. We dream about more smiles on the street, and empowering people to use public space as a way to relate ourselves to peace, visibility, solidarity, coexistence, and other beautiful things. And you – are you a Carishina en Bici?

 

Dock 11 Alley-cat and Opening Party

This last weekend was the Dock 11 store opening alley-cat race and party. It was a super laid-back alley-cat, and I had a blast rolling around Berlin with two of the raddest, coolest, bike polo ladies I know – Käete and Gitti.  Our race started after we finished our beers and Käete finally said ‘ok, one more cigarette and then we’ll go,’ 20 minutes after the race had already started.  We were riding with a larger group of people, who were all determined to have fun and not take things too seriously.

This alley-cat was one of my favorite kinds because every stop involved doing some sort of task, and you got points for arriving at the stop (10 points), and points for how well you did the task, totally arbitrarily judged up to 40 points (although I received 300 points at one stop…). I think these kinds of alley-cats are far superior to the plain-old-stamp-your-manifest-and-go sort. Personal preference.

Anyways. I remembered to take photos at most stops, and so here is a visual storybook of the race.

First, we went to ‘get stoned’ by smashing a concrete block in half.

Then we rode to a small park where there are still parts of the Berlin wall, and we had to use the half a block from the first stop to ‘rebuild the wall.’ Tounge-n-cheek political stop: check.

Next we went to a small BMX track where there was a table with 9 pictures of cats. Volunteers then handed you 9 names of types of house cats and you had to correctly identify the cat species. I failed at this task (I wish I could blame this on German, but I can’t) and did not correctly identify a single cat. But at least I remembered not to label the dog, which would have put me at -20 points.

BEST STOP – next we went to an outdoor bar where you had to listen to a song, try to remember the lyrics, and then do air guitar and sing the song in front of everyone. I got a laidback reggae song where the chorus was ‘oh man, oh man, kill all the whiteman.’

After our 30 seconds of fame (and another beer), we rode to what was probably the most technically difficult bike polo stop I’ve ever been too.

Step 1: Pick the mallet up off the ground, on your bike. I play polo, and I’m still not good at this.

Step 2: Ride up and over a long piece of wood (sort of like a see-saw).

Step 3: Shoot a goal into a small cardboard box.

 After the polo stop, we had to go to bar and pick up a hamburger bun to bring to the party. Apparently we were also supposed to look at the staff and then guess how much they collectively weighed at the end. That got lost in translation for me.

Next, we had a short photo shoot with long-exposure photos.  I’m excited to see how those turn out.

At the second to last stop we had to create a bracelet for ourselves out of bicycle chain. I had seen other people at stops with chains on who had forgotten to clean the chain first and were covered in grease, and so I felt pretty smart for remembering to do that first.

Lastly we were charged with the task of arriving at the final stop/party with a blue ice cream cone in hand. I had no idea about this because I couldn’t read the manifest, and had been blindly following Kaete and Gitti the whole time. So all of a sudden we stop at an ice cream place, and I just figured that people wanted to take an ice cream break, which I was totally down with, but then I was confused as to why we were packing up the ice cream and taking it away. Then when we were only a few blocks from the finish, and it had started to rain, Kaete takes out the ice cream, puts it in cones, and we all rode to the finish with ice cream cones in our hands like torches. We failed to find blue ice cream, but purple was close enough to earn us a special prize at the end.

Then I stopped taking pictures, ate a hamburger, drank some beers, and hung out at a really fun party. Thanks Dock 11 for organizing a great race and party!

Oh. And along the way there was a beautiful sunset over a river in Berlin.

A sorority track race?

I have no idea what this is. I saw the video on another blog, and it didn’t give much information. But it sure does look like fun. Mostly I think the handoffs look fun, and like something I would probably fail at (0:48 would be me).

Final thought – where do all these matching Schwinn’s come from?

‘Pedal Pumpers’ from Surly

Here is a great post from the Surly blog about the disconnect between advertising and reality.