The long awaited plans of tallbiking along the Vancouver Seawall finally happened. My buddy and I have been anticipating this bike ride since we finished building my tallbike earlier this year. We knew it was gonna be a gong-show and that we would attract a lot of attention, but little did we know the magnitude of attention we would be getting. Let's put it this way... if you want to be a rockstar for a day, ride tallbikes around the Vancouver Seawall! LOL! Yes, indeed, we were attention whores. And yes we loved every minute of it!
Going into Downtown Vancouver, we both had to take our cars with our tallbikes stuffed in the trunk. Yes, they fit! Normally, we would just ride our bikes into downtown, however, we do live pretty far from the downtown core and it certainly would have been difficult to ride our tallbikes all that way.
This would be our starting point, False Creek Science World. This is where it all starts. The pointing and laughing, the ooh'ing and ahh'ing, the 'how do you get on those things' questions, the stares, the WTF looks, the OMG looks, the 'Wow, looky that mommy!' from little kids, the 'those things are gonna get those guys laid' comments, the 'how do you get off those things' questions, riding with the biggest grins on our faces, the hundreds of tourists taking our pictures, etc. etc. etc. What a day it turned out to be.
Best pic ever! This guy's face pretty much sums up how we were feeling all day!
We made our way from Science World into English Bay where the above picture was taken. This is where the large crowd was forming. A very unusually large crowd I might add. There were police blockades everywhere and we did not know what was going on. Low and behold just a few meters ahead of us, a parade was happening. Yay, a parade!! And quickly we find out that it was a Hare Krishna parade! Haha, it was so cool, Krishna music blasting loudly, hundreds of people everywhere dressed in Krishna clothes, and there was even a huge Hare Krishna cart as a centerpiece of the parade. I was seriously expecting a big elephant to be pulling the cart, but instead it was hundreds of people pulling it.
Here's Matt for the perfect photo op in front of the Hare Krishna cart. There were thousands of people there! And we definitely got our share of attention.
As we passed the parade, we made our way into Stanley Park and proceeded to go around the Seawall. Our first stop was to take pictures of the Vancouver skyline.
And of course, messing around with the statue of the great Harry Jerome was obligatory!
Riding around Stanley park was full of WiN everywhere we went. Total and complete strangers were talking to us and smiling and laughing along. The little kids were the best as their eyes grew as they see us riding by. And it certainly was tres cool when pretty girls on bikes started talking to us and made small chit chat. It was all fun and the tallbikes were a huge hit.
We were a big hit especially with the tourists. People from all over the world asking to take pictures of us. And of course we obliged.
Posing with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics Inukshuk
As we made our way back from where we started, we stopped at the Olympic Village for a few more photo ops. This is where we would decide to end our day or to keep going on towards Granville Island.
This giant bird makes our tallbikes look puny!
Since there was still plenty of daylight left, we decided to keep riding towards Granville Island. I think we both wanted to keep the day going because it was certainly one of the funnest bike rides that we've ever had, and we've been on some epic cycling weekend tours.
And so we continue on. Granville Island will be our last stop before heading back to our cars. And what a great decision it was to keep going. When we arrived in Granville Island, we see something awesomely unbelievable. We see 3 other guys on tallbikes! And they were on much taller bikes than we were! We were on opposite sides of the road so it was just a quick wave and a yell of 'brothers!' was had before losing them. As we rode into Granville Island, there was no denying that both of us wanted to catch those other 3 tallbikers. So off we went and continued on towards Vanier Park! We never did see them again along this route. So, having thought that was the end of that, we decided that it was time to head back. It was to be the end of a great day of riding. To our surprise, on our way back and out of the corner of my eye, I see the 3 tallbikers! So we chased them down as they were about a block away from us. When we finally caught up, it was like a band of brothers (lol!) talking like we've known each other a long time!
Here's the video I took when we caught up to them. Say 'crazy' much? :D
Here we find out that they were 3 brothers and more shockingly, at least to me, the Zenga Brothers and that they were the ones involved in creating and directing a movie that I have been searching for in the past year. The movie is called Where Are You Go and it is about cycling across Africa from Cairo to Cape Town. Here is the trailer of that movie -->Where Are You Go - Trailer<-- . Yes! that is indeed the same tallbike in the movie, and they rode it across Africa! Benny Zenga, the bearded one on my clip, is the co-director of the movie. He gave me his email address and I have now been in contact with him so that I can get this movie from him. He already set aside a couple of DVD's for us. What a great guy. What a great bunch of guys. We were so fortunate to run into these 3 brothers and hopefully, some day, we can ride again. Here's some more information on the Zenga Brothers and what they do, a big shout out to these guys Zenga Brothers dot Com!
Truly great running into these guys
Well, that was our day of Tallbikin' Vancouver. We don't get to do this too often but when we do, it is a guaranteed great time which leaves us longing for more. Until next time..
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