Video by LaPulgada of El Sur en Bici, Quito, Ecuador

This last summer I made a video and wrote a blog post about the geography of Quito. I talked a bit about how a mountain in the middle of Quito acts as both a physical and social barrier between the north and the south.  In the past a lot of bike organizing in Quito was concentrated in Northern Quito, but in the last year a new collective called El Sur en Bici (The South by Bike) have been organizing a variety of events around biking. They organize rides, bike polo, and alley-cats always with an eye to being as inclusive across race, gender, age, and class as possible. They are an awesome group doing amazing organizing to help bridge the geographic gap in bike organizing in Quito. This video shows off what they are doing, and how much fun they’re having.

Another Takao Cup Video

Here is a video that I put together from the Takao Cup in Taiwan.  The last video I posted gives a much better sense of the games – my video is just a lot of short clips from the games I was able to film. But, it was fun to put together and I hope you enjoy it.

I had a really awesome week long trip to Taiwan. I first arrived in Taipei where I met up with Jake and Larry, my friends from Natooke Chengdu. We then took a bullet train south to Taichun to meet up with Ines, of Natooke Beijing. The next day we set out on a 220km ride from Taichun to Kaohsiung, biking about half the island of Taiwan. Despite the rain for the first 100km, we had a blast.

The next day the tournament began in Kaohsiung with a day of pick-up, and teams from Taipei, Kaohsiung, Beijing, Chengdu, and Tokyo/Osaka arrived at the courts throughout the day. Games were played, beer was drank, and fun was had.

The next morning team play began with a swiss style round (you played teams with the same record as you). Jake, Larry, and I participated as the only co-ed team of the tournament representing Natooke Chengdu.  Overall there were 2 women’s teams, and 10 teams in the mixed bracket. We went 1-0-2 in the Swiss round, and then narrowly lost both our games in the double elimination bracket. But we had a lot of fun in the meantime, and played a lot of good polo.

The team from Japan swept the tournament with a perfect record (the team in pink in the video), with two mountain biker teams from Kaohsiung taking second and third place. Overall the tournament was a fun, laid-back, play hard atmosphere, where all the clubs were just really excited to be playing against other teams and trying to take their play to the next level.

I also had the lucky opportunity to hang around Kaohsiung for an extra day after the tournament, and hang out with Mark, the tournament organizer. It was great chatting with him about polo, biking, and life. I also got to check out the cool, innovative designs of where he works – Free Parable Design. They have some really cool ideas of how to re-envision and innovate bicycle accessory designs.

I also got to nerd out to the coolest transportation travel week I’ve probably ever had. I got to take the bullet train (twice), bike half a country in one day, and I got to go to see the most beautiful, and the third most beautiful subway stops in the world. Nerdin out to the max!

Takao Cup Video

Here is video from the bike polo tournament I went to last week in Taiwan. I had an awesome time meeting the polo folks from Taiwan and Japan, playing lots of polo, biking 220km from Taichun to Kaohsiung in one day, hanging out with friends from China, and just drinking beers and hanging out.

(*Clarification – I did not make this video. It’s a video from the tournament organizer. I’m putting together a shorter video that I’ll hopefully put up in the next few days)

Bike Polo Beijing

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A few photos from bike polo in Beijing.