EPISODE 29
Bicycle Frame of Mind: Portland. Film Festival. Community.
Ayleen Crotty, founder of the prestigious Filmed by Bike movie festival, joins us for a captivating conversation about the fascinating origins of this unique event, born from Portland’s vibrant bike culture in the early 2000s. Ayleen shares her personal journey into cycling, from a hesitant start in Illinois to following her passions by moving to Oregon for community building and two-wheeled adventures. Hear about Filmed by Bike’s evolution, the challenges of organizing grassroots events, and the festival’s inspiring transition to a platform supporting filmmakers worldwide. In a time currently dominated by negative media, this episode is a celebration of bikes, films, and the power of human connection.
Episode Transcript
Ayleen: And when you go into the theater, and the lights go down, and it’s dark, and you’re watching these movies together, it doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, what kind of riding you’re into, or even if you do ride a bike. We could all sit there and laugh at the same funny moments, cry at the sad moments, and enjoy these movies together.
Gabriel: You just heard Ayleen Crotty describe the widespread appeal of Filmed by Bike, the unique bicycle film festival that she founded in Portland, Oregon, more than 20 years ago. As you will hear in this episode, the festival was a product of multiple elements that came together in the city in the early 2000s, including a diverse, vibrant bike culture that drew people like Ayleen to Portland from across the country. Whether it be organizing impromptu gatherings, supported charity rides, and even Filmed by Bike, Ayleen always approached her passion with a bicycle frame of mind.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. Last season featured an episode with Christopher Briscoe called “Get out of Your Comfort Zone.” Christopher and his son Quincy bicycled Route 66 from Los Angeles to Chicago, a trip that was documented in a book and a film, both titled The Road Between Us. The film was co-directed by my aunt, Kathy Roselli, and was chosen to be screened at Portland’s famous Filmed by Bike movie festival. And that brings me to today’s guest, Ayleen Crotty. Ayleen founded Filmed by Bike in recently. For the past 20 years, Ayleen has also been a driving force in promoting bicycle culture, both inside and outside of Portland. I am looking forward to finding out a lot more about Ayleen’s background, Portland’s bike scene, and Filmed by Bike’s colorful history. Ayleen, thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Ayleen: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Gabriel: Well, since I’m sure that my Aunt Kathy is going to listen to this episode, I want to start off by asking about your recollections of The Road Between Us.
Ayleen: Yeah, well, The Road Between Us was a really special film. At Filmed by Bike every year, we would show between 50 and 75 films. And as a film festival that’s been around for more than 20 years, that’s a lot of films. But I definitely remember The Road Between Us because it was such a moving story. And also the cinematography was awesome. It was so well edited. The story just carried you along. I mean, you didn’t want to stop watching. Our audience loved it. And there were so many cool photographs in there. And just the sweet story of a father and son riding together. Bike touring pieces like that and bicycle tales like that are so relevant right now, because the way it showcased people coming together no matter who you are across the nation, it just gives me so much hope for humanity when I watch movies like that, when I hear stories like that. And I think the bicycle as a form of travel and connection is so much a part of that.
Gabriel: Well, those are very nice things to say. And Kathy, you can turn off the episode now. You’ve got your bit in.
Ayleen: Yeah.
Gabriel: Actually, that’s really cool that you’re saying that because this podcast features those kinds of touring stories on every episode. And everybody is just so positive about the people that they meet, even in places that might be considered dangerous or unsafe to travel officially or might have a bad reputation. When people actually go to these places, they so often find that people are just as kind or helpful or even more helpful than in the so-called first world.
Ayleen: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, over the years, Filmed by Bike has shown just a wealth of bike touring related movies. And we have definitely seen that there is that thread of people going to places where they were told you can’t bike there or you shouldn’t bike there, whether it was impassable or potentially dangerous. The stories that result are always so intriguing and so lovely. And overall, though the tourists may have faced some challenges, overwhelmingly the amount of people that come out with, you know, hearts of kindness and support in helping see people through their journeys. Total strangers. I mean, that is such a common thread we saw in all the films related to bike touring and it’s so special.
Gabriel: Yes, definitely. And it’s wonderful and it gives you hope in this time when you’re bombarded with all of this negativity on the news.
Ayleen: Yeah, my take on it is that there is a force out there in the world that’s trying to tell us things are a certain way and it’s pretty negative. But really, when we get out in the world and we connect with people, there’s a different story, and we know it. As humans, we want to connect and we want to support each other. Again, yeah, it does give me so much hope as well for the future.
Gabriel: Now let’s turn our attention to you a little bit. It’s so interesting that you established a bicycle film festival. I imagine you must have some experience with both riding bicycles and maybe working on film festivals prior to Filmed by Bike? Can you share a little bit about those two pieces of your background?
Ayleen: Yeah, so I come from an interactive and experiential arts background and I have a real love of bringing people together for an experience that allows them to escape their cares of the daily world and have moments of delight and opportunities to connect with other people in that experience. So when I started Filmed by Bike, there were so many important factors at play that allowed Filmed by Bike to exist. I was living in Portland, Oregon, where I still live and this was around that era of Portland, there was a thread that ran through the community of a try-anything attitude. Throw it at the wall, see if it sticks. If it doesn’t, no big deal, move on, try something else. But if it does, then maybe it’s something you want to stick with and keep it going. The city was inexpensive at the time. It was filled with creative people. We had an awesome city government supporting our street infrastructure, making it easier to ride bikes, safer, slowly and slowly, but surely making it safer to ride bikes. So there was just this vibrancy in the bicycle community, vibrancy in the creativity of the city, and it allowed, that support allowed for a lot of people to create creative endeavors. Our food cart scene, our music scene, like so many neat projects started around that time, and many of them still exist to this day. When I started Filmed by Bike, I was working in the bicycle industry, I was working at a bicycle non-profit. I also became an event manager after that. So I had that support of an understanding of how to organize events and to be able to have resources for equipment and other needs to make the event happen and make it run well. And then in my past, I had run a very small film festival, a one-time film showing more so. And I had studied film in college, but I’m not a filmmaker. I have a true love of curation. I’ve run a gallery out of my home when I was in college. I really love the idea of taking the talent of others and curating it into a program that allows people to come and experience it. And those factors and Portland’s extremely vibrant bike scene, bike culture, bike community of that time, really led to the creation of Filmed by Bike. We thought we were putting on this film festival as a one- time fundraiser for something else, but there was a standing room-only crowd on the night that we opened, and I thought, hmm, maybe we should try this again the next year. And then it just grew from there. So our bike community here in Portland was so vibrant and so strong and so curious at that time. And a lot of that still exists to this day, which really warms my heart to see that so many years later.
Gabriel: It sounds like a really special time with a lot of really interesting people around and a lot of really good energy.
Ayleen: Yeah, absolutely. And I credit the originators of Portland for all of that. Such an interesting part of the United States. The Pacific Northwest has this strong love of the outdoors. A lot of people that made this their home for generations wanted something different. They wanted to be self-reliant and resilient people who appreciated the outdoors, who made companies founded on creating natural products and wholesome foods. And just a lot of really salt- of-the-earth-type people. And so fast forward, you know, a couple generations later, when I moved to town, that foundation was there for Portland and the Pacific Northwest in general. And that foundation of a love of the outdoors and being active and working together and building community definitely is what allowed us to grow as a bike community and have that foundation of the folks that came before us. I came from the Chicagoland area and moved out here. And when I moved to Portland, I was one of many who were moving out here in droves. And a lot of us come from somewhere else and chose to make this our home. And it’s a really constant theme here as people ask, “Where are you from?” Assuming that you’re not from here because there are so many people who have moved from elsewhere.
Gabriel: I think the outdoors aspect is a great one to bring up, because it does also help answer the question of,” Why Portland?” in terms of this bicycle culture. A lot of people are into hiking and kayaking and outdoor sports, because there are so many amazing natural areas within reach, from the ocean to the Cascades to the gorge, everything. I can see now as we delve into it that it was really a special blend of outdoorsyness and yeah, try everything, and be creative that led to this.
Ayleen: Yeah.
Gabriel: What about your personal connection with the bicycle? You seem to have gravitated towards it both with the film festival and you mentioned this non-profit. Were you always into bicycling, or how did you get started with it?
Ayleen: I’m a relatively late bloomer in a biking. I lived on a gravel road on a busy street when I was young, and I did not take to riding. I tried a few times and it just really wasn’t for me. But then, when I went to college, I was in central Illinois at University of Illinois, which is a really nice campus. It’s really kind of a closed off area, a lot of streets that don’t allow cars to go through and almost no parking. You can’t really have a car on campus reasonably, or at least at the time I was there. And so I found that I could walk around campus pretty well, and there was a bus that was not easy to take. But I found that on a bike I could just cruise around campus with my friends. You know, the world was my oyster. I was young. I was away from home. I was exploring so many new ideas and people and places and ways of being, and the bike allowed me to just get to all of that. To ride late at night, to come home at the wee hours of the morning, to get up early and go to class, to just do what I wanted to do. And I felt like that bike gave me so much freedom to be experiencing the world the way I wanted to. And I was instantly hooked. I was like, this bicycle thing is awesome. I come from a zine background, so I was tapped into a worldwide community of people who were sharing thoughts through print material. And through that, I started those connections in high school, and a lot of that continued into my college years. And through that network, I discovered Critical Mass out of San Francisco and I was just floored by the idea of Critical Mass. In my small college town, we didn’t have a large traffic problem. It was a small area. But the idea of Critical Mass bringing people together to celebrate bikes really resonated with me. So I started Critical Mass in my college town, and that really opened up my eyes to more of a bicycle culture and a global movement. And again, I was just hooked. I loved everything about how the bike allowed me to go further. The people I met along the way – fast forward to 2000 and I moved to Portland – I chose Portland because I knew it was a bike friendly city. I had visited. I loved riding here. I knew the city was dedicated to promoting bicycle infrastructure. I knew there was a bike community here. And it just seemed like such an exciting place to move somewhere where bicycles were focused. I got involved with Critical Mass in Portland as well, and at the time, that was the way the bicycle community in Portland connected. People wonder if Critical Mass is effective or why it exists and are they just out there blocking cars and people are trying to get home from work and they’re kind of annoyed? All of that is true.
Gabriel: I have participated in a San Francisco Critical Mass ride. And I have to tell you, it’s a bit like anarchy on two wheels. Not everybody is into it. Can you just take a step back and tell everyone what is a Critical Mass ride?
Ayleen: Yeah. So Critical Mass started in San Francisco as a movement to get people on their bikes together, on their way home from work, once a month. It has spread all over the world. The idea was to encourage people to ride together to showcase to the drivers in their cars that there was another option for getting around their region. I think in terms of inspiring people to ride bikes instead of driving, Critical Mass is not an effective tool for that. But for us here in Portland, our Critical Mass was our networking group. It was how we made connections and met each other before the time of social media. We were meeting in person because we were together once a month. It is a bit like anarchy. So we were fired up. There was this excitement, that crowd excitement of being together and riding through the streets together in that group safety. And we talked to each other. We were so fired up, we wanted to do more things related to bikes. Critical Mass wasn’t enough for us. Once a month was not enough. And I think a lot of us knew the tactics we were using – that tool of Critical Mass for advocacy and inspiring people to ride bikes – we all pretty much knew it wasn’t effective. But we still kept doing it because being together, holding space and sharing space with other people who understood our passion for bikes, was really powerful. There were many of us who rode our bikes to work and we were the only one in our office or our workplace that showed up by bike. And I could ride to work and not pass another cyclist back then. It’s hard to believe that here in Portland, Oregon, but it was true. And if we rode our bikes and saw another cyclist, we waved. We waved at each other because there weren’t many of us. And we thought, I probably know that person. Critical mass was bringing us together to have those conversations. But we knew we needed more. And that’s really where the whole bicycle culture, the events, the movement of Portland, all the neat things that happened in this day, really started around that time. And that was such a burgeoning movement and era for our city, 100 percent. And I credit Critical Mass with getting it all started. Even if it’s a flawed advocacy tool, it was an awesome networking tool.
Gabriel: Again, to put a finer point on it, when you describe it as, Critical Mass is just people riding their bicycles, I mean, that doesn’t sound like anarchy. But what I experienced was that no one’s paying any attention to any of the traffic rules because it’s just this kind of a swarm of cyclists. And in fact, people are maybe even going forward down the street and blocking off streets so that cars can’t go. So I just want to make real clear that it’s not like, “Oh, let’s all commute.” But in a normal way, like, “Oh, it’s a red light. Let’s stop.” No, it’s like, Here we go, you know. Oh, there’s a streetcar coming. Avoid it at the last second!” I mean, it was pretty crazy.
Ayleen: Yeah. And there is some order to the chaos. The ride flows more smoothly and efficiently and clears through an area more efficiently when the streets are blocked and everyone is allowed to move at once rather than going, stopping at every light. But it is true that in that group atmosphere, people get excited, and we saw people going into oncoming traffic. That was around the time Critical Mass really started to break down in Portland and become less relevant. It was Friday after work, people were excited and their tactics weren’t necessarily helping us with our movement and our desire to inspire more people to ride bikes. That’s when a lot of us broke off and reduced our time with Critical Mass and began to start other movements and opportunities and events, because we saw the need for more effective community building and bicycle advocacy.
Gabriel: My interest in it was raising awareness for drivers about bicycles, as someone who also commuted to work by bike, but when you see drivers get really annoyed with cyclists, then you feel, okay, this may not be productive.
Ayleen: Exactly.
Gabriel: We’ll move on from Critical Mass.
Ayleen: I could talk about Critical Mass all day. It is such a rich part of our global, global bicycle culture. Critical Mass rides happening all over the world. A really rich part of our history, and what I like to say is that Portland is beyond Critical Mass. We no longer need that as a tool. We have so much else available to us here in Portland these days, and in many other cities. We’ve come to a really beautiful place in our bicycle advocacy and our bicycle culture.
Gabriel: Yeah, and then getting back to Filmed by Bike, in its inaugural year, you said that it was connected to a different event, but you didn’t mention which one. Can you just go into a little more detail about that initial event?
Ayleen: Yeah, so Portland had a summer festival called Bike Summer, which was a month-long festival celebrating bikes. There was a central organizing committee, but the committee wasn’t responsible for putting on a single event. The events were hosted by community members who had an interest in a topic and they would host maybe a heritage trees bicycle ride or a cruise along bike paths or a history tour of a neighborhood or just some sort of a hangout or something educational. So these events happened every day of the month. Some days had multiple events. Everything was free. Everything was volunteer- driven. and one of those events was called the Multnomah County Bike Fair. We’re in Multnomah County, and the idea was to base it on an American county fair with all the kind of country-style events that would happen but make them bike themed. So at a country fair, you might have a tractor trailer pull, but we would have a bike trailer pull, and we would load up the bike trailers and see who could pedal and drag that trailer the furthest with the most of weight. All sorts of really fun, goofy events. It was a really interesting time in Portland because so many of our events were so grassroots that we just took over a parking lot to have an event for the day or found an abandoned area of town and we didn’t have permits. We didn’t have any authority to be there, any permission to be there. And for the most part, things were fun. We’d get away with a lot and you know, we’d for the most part clean up after ourselves, not leave a mess behind. But ultimately, these weren’t sanctioned events. There were times when the events would get shut down and we’d have to end and move on. But as people began to have more responsibilities in their lives, and more people started to be attracted to joining in on bike community stuff, a lot of people weren’t comfortable with that side of things, in that the police might come and ask us to move along.
Gabriel: And if families got involved.
Ayleen: They had families, had a job to get to, we were very fortunate. Generally, we were just asked to move along. There wasn’t much more serious that generally happened than that. But we decided that for Bike Summer one of these years, for the Multnomah County Bike Fair, we wanted this event to be something sanctioned. We wanted permits. We wanted to be at a notable city park. We wanted to bring people together from all walks of life who might love bikes or be curious about bikes, but not be comfortable in an unsanctioned environment where they might be asked to leave by the property owner or the police. So, Multnomah County Bike Fair was a very turning point moment in our bicycle culture, because it was that first sanctioned but also grassroots event, absolutely free. No one had to pay to be there. No one had to pay to participate. So, a different kind of event than a paid bicycle tour or ride, which was the only other type of event that really existed at the time. We needed money for those permits. And so, we’re brainstorming how we could raise funds to put this really cool event on. And I said, well, we had a local creative who was making movies about bikes. And I truly believe that when you start to see a niche culture or movement reflected in music, art, film, that’s really a sign that something that was a small interest of some people is really growing. So, that’s really when we knew a bicycle culture was forming because we were seeing it reflected in some videos that were being made and in music and in art. And so, a local guy was making bicycle-related movies on VHS tape. And I thought, well, I bet we can get some people together to watch these movies that he’s making. I searched around for a few other movies. We got a couple films out of San Francisco and I sat on the floor of a building where we had a projector and a VHS machine and I switched out tapes from film to film. That’s how high-tech it was. I also planned the event to begin at the ending point of a Critical Mass ride. So, the ride came to the end at the doorstep of the micro theater where we were hosting Filmed by Bike the first year.
Gabriel: It’s genius to have it at the end of a Critical Mass ride.
Ayleen: Yeah. And so, I was guaranteed a crowd, but people couldn’t have left. People didn’t need to stay, but people stayed. And that was our little trick the first year and it really helped us gain some awareness for what we were doing. We had a sold out show, standing room only, lots of high energy. People were just thrilled. We’d never had anything like that in Portland before. And it was very exciting to see people coming together, to watch these films, to laugh together. And, you know, it’s that really goofy niche humor. It wasn’t anything high production value, but it didn’t matter. Just seeing ourselves, seeing our interest reflected on screen was really powerful.
Gabriel: Wow. Okay. That’s a really cool start. And you had some kind of venue, I guess, that you had rented out or allowed you to have your little VHS setup?
Ayleen: Yeah. And that was another part of the many factors that came together to make Filmed by Bike happen really were a result of this being a time in Portland where everything was very accessible. Portland’s become a quite expensive city. Many of our creative class have been pushed out of the city due to not being able to afford to live here. But when we got started in the early inexpensive. There were creatives occupying buildings for not a lot of money to run creative endeavors. So this space we used was called La Palabra Cafe Press. And it was a print shop, a photography studio, and just a general art space that was used for a wide variety of purposes. And it was run by a collective of people. And we approached them, I approached them, and asked if we could host our event there. They may have charged me something, but it was pretty much peanuts, whatever they charged for the use of their space. They had a big open room and a projector, so it was just perfect for us. And I get really nostalgic when I think about that time in Portland, and the access we had to spaces and people without money being as much of a factor. I mean, money still needed to be there and we still exchanged money to make things happen. But it wasn’t such significant money. And we weren’t struggling as much to pay our rent, the way a lot of people struggle to pay their rent in Portland these days.
Gabriel: What other events were you involved in besides Filmed by Bike?
Ayleen: I was very involved in the initial years of what was called Bike Summer and then became Pedalpalooza. So it started as a two-week festival, then it grew to a month-long festival, and now it exists as a summertime festival. So June, July and August. And there are hundreds of events throughout the summer. I’m no longer involved, though I do attend a lot of the events, and it’s so fun to see that it is flourishing, and just the creativity behind all of it. So I was very much a part of that. And then my job became, when I left the non-profit – the Community Cycling Center is where I had been working – I joined a company focused on bicycle event management and we produced events all throughout Oregon and into Washington focused on primarily one-day cycling events that were fundraisers for non-profit organizations. So we worked with the American Lung Association and we worked with the Alzheimer’s Association and ALS Association and many other organizations, putting on one-day bike events like century rides. We ran a mountain bike event in Oregon that I remained involved with for many, many years. And so this idea of bringing people together was another theme. In this case, it was paid events. It was a different audience, but I still saw that same energy and excitement of people just being together with bikers for the day. And some of our events had as many as 2,000 participants and 3,000 spectators, all gathering together. And those were some really special moments. Event management is a lot of work and I’m thankful to no longer be in that industry, but I learned a lot. I was in that industry for about 14 years and it was a lot of fun.
Gabriel: And were you inspired to do any of the rides yourself?
Ayleen: A supported ride is awesome. Going out on your own, touring, riding, all of that’s great too. But man, sometimes it’s so nice to just jump on your bike with a bunch of other people and not have to think about anything. Not have to plan your route, not have to bring your own food. You know, you sit down at the finish line and you enjoy a dinner that’s been prepared for you. It’s really luxurious, especially when you know it’s supporting a good cause. That can feel really good, to be engaged in those paid events. But yeah, I definitely got to participate in a handful of them. And it’s a lot of fun to go out there and see parts of the state that I wouldn’t necessarily have seen otherwise.
Gabriel: Nice.
Ayleen: You know, not everybody is comfortable being self- supported. So supported rides really offer an opportunity to build that ride community amongst people who wouldn’t ever do it on their own. Some of those riders, they wouldn’t feel comfortable and just personal safety or personal interest or not enough time in the day. So many different reasons. So I really loved being an event manager for bike events. I feel like it is a community that is under- acknowledged within the bicycle industry and within the bicycle culture. They are their own thing. They’re out there, they’re riding, they’re having a great time. And usually they’re raising money for great causes too.
Gabriel: The sense of community, it does bring in a whole another set of people, like you said, to discover cycling and feel really great about achieving something. So I’m all in favor of it.
Ayleen: Yeah. And then these groups of cyclists moving through communities with all the excitement and the vibrancy. I know there’s always going to be some people in some communities that don’t like seeing the bikes come through, but we have a really awesome statewide ride series called Cycle Oregon and they exist to help support small rural communities in Oregon. They have a week-long version and some shorter versions and they’ve been around for 30 plus years. And people ride through these small communities and the communities are really involved in the event, in terms of serving the dinners and helping out at camp. And it’s a chance for us at the end of the day, after riding, to sit and connect with the locals and get to know them and find out more about what their needs are as a community. And there’s a foundation that they can apply to for support for their communities. On one of the year’s rides, a bunch of us were hanging out at the bar after the ride and we got chatting with the locals. And one woman somehow randomly brought up that they had had to close their library because they couldn’t afford to staff it and keep the lights on. And they just wanted to be open one day a week. That’s how small of a community they were. And we encouraged them to apply to the Cycle Oregon Fund, because that’s exactly the type of projects that they enjoy supporting. And a little bit of money sometimes goes a long way in those small towns. And to see bicyclists being able to bring that support to those communities and to have those connections with the people that live there and see their communities and meet the people is really special. And to see that Cycle Oregon has existed for all these years doing the good work that they do, I think it’s a lovely connection for the people riding to actually get to know the areas and the people of the regions through which they ride. So often as cyclists, we pass through beautiful areas where people call home, but we don’t get to know the people or the needs of the community or the history of the area. And it’s kind of the tricky part of being a tourist that’s just traveling through.
Gabriel: And also getting those dialogues started help create a bond between the people and eliminate misconceptions that might exist about what kind of person lives in the city or what kind of person lives in a rural community. And that’s another theme that comes up, is that the bicycle is such an accessible mode of travel. Really cool. I had not heard of this ride series. We talked about supported tours. Were you inspired by the film festival or for any other reason to do unsupported bike touring?
Ayleen: Yeah, I’ve done a little bit of unsupported bike touring and Filmed by Bike was an artistic dream come true and a labor of love on top of busy day jobs the entire time I ran the festival. So part of the reason for me being interested in retiring from Filmed by Bike and passing it along to somebody else to manage was to free myself up. So I’d have more time to ride my bike. So I still have a lot of dreams of bike tours I’d like to go on. My family loves to ride bikes and my stepson is a strong nine-year-old rider with an interest in doing some overnight touring. We’ve got our sights set on some ideas for this coming summer and I definitely want to get out there more and be on my bike a whole lot more than I was able to. You know, that’s the irony of running a bicycle-related film festival and seeing all these beautiful scenes on screen and just not having enough time in the day to get out there and do that myself.
Gabriel: May I ask where you did your little bit of touring as you call it?
Ayleen: Let’s see. One of the fun trips I took was I had a wedding in rural Vermont to go to and I flew into Massachusetts and… or I flew into Connecticut and I rode through Massachusetts on my way to Vermont and I had a folding bike. I’d never done any touring before and this was before people really used the internet for research very much. I just kind of winged it. I had some bags I had found that I strapped to that little bike and I just kind of went for it. I had this awesome map I had found of the region. It was of great bike routes in the region and the map listed which roads to take that were bike-friendly. It did not have many indicators on the map, but one of the things it did indicate was ice cream shops. It was like, hey, we’ll show you where the bike shops are, where the ice cream shops are and where bike- friendly overnight accommodations are. I thought that was the I wish I still had that map it was so great.
Gabriel: Yeah that’s awesome.
Ayleen: It worked out. I had a hard time finding tubes for that funky little bike at the time but it all worked out. And I was all alone and I don’t remember getting lost and, you know, this was time when we didn’t really use our phones to navigate so I don’t know. I still think back to that time and think, I can’t believe I did that but I did it and it was awesome, and I made my way all the way to the wedding and I had had the foresight to ship ahead wedding attire so when I arrived, there was fresh clothing for me and, you know, I could look presentable at the wedding and not have to worry about carrying that with me on the bike.
Gabriel: In the episode “No Preparation, Some Improvisation – Ten Touring Tips for Beginners” with Simon Alfassa, Tip Number One is something like, if your bike tour destination is a wedding, make sure your suit or dress gets there ahead of you.
Ayleen: Yeah, really. My bags were small. I didn’t have a lot of cargo capacity, because it was whatever I could fit onto a little folding bike.
Gabriel: Was it a Brompton folding bike?
Ayleen: It was not… no, I didn’t have a Brompton I had a Birdy. I don’t remember how they started but they were distributed by Burley for a while. I don’t think they exist anymore.
Gabriel: Actually the Birdy is still flying. How it came to be is a story that warms my heart. Marcus Riese and Heiko Müller were mechanical engineering students in Darmstadt, Germany, who in 1992 designed a new kind of bicycle, one that included both full suspension and the ability to fold down compactly. The design won an innovation prize and the two friends felt encouraged to found a company called, not surprisingly, Riese und Müller. They exhibited their prototype at Europe’s largest bicycle trade fairs, garnering very little interest. Sometimes however, it only takes one. That person was George Lin, an entrepreneur who owned Pacific bicycles in Taiwan. Lin took over the manufacturer of the Birdy and it has been in production since 1995.
Ayleen: It was a great bike. I was the second owner and the original owners lived in Chicago and used it as their commuter bike, and they sold it to me for a steal, because they just wanted to pass it along to someone who would use it. I went a lot of places with that bike and it was really a fun little ride. It rode very comfortably. Nowadays I don’t know if I would feel as comfortable on it, because I’m a little more particular about my bike fit, but it really did the job and got me where I wanted to go. And friends and I would go up to Seattle and up to Vancouver, BC with our bikes periodically and make what we called ambassadorial visits where we’d go connect with the bike communities up there and that was always a lot of fun and we would just be on our bikes all day, every day, you know, as soon as we woke up til the very end of the day, just getting the most out of our trips and the chance to explore those areas and meet the people and that little folding bike really got me around.
Gabriel: I’m still curious about how you had to go to this wedding and you decided to fly into Connecticut, if it was Connecticut. That’s very unusual, I would have to say. The folding bike has the advantage that you could easily check it in, right?
Ayleen: Yeah.
Gabriel: Still just this idea of flying into some other place and using this map of ice cream shops to guide you… I mean, do you have any other recollections about what pushed you in that direction?
Ayleen: Well, I don’t recall exactly, but when I think about it I think, okay, what would I have been thinking? I fly in here, I rent a car, I drive to my friend’s rural property. I was car-free at the time. I had a driver’s license but I was car- free, and the thought of renting a car to me seemed so silly. You rent it, you drive to the farm. We were going to stay at the land for, you know, two days, and I just thought, wow, and then I just have this car sitting there? It didn’t make a lot of sense to me and I thought, oh, I could also fly in and then ride my bike. I don’t know. It made sense at the time, and I wish I still thought like that.
Gabriel: Yeah, the fact that you were car-free was the key point there.
Ayleen: And I was young. Yeah.
Gabriel: Young, carefree, car-free.
Ayleen: Yes, it’s the fact that carefree and car-free in the early 2000s, and what a trip. Like, what a great intro to bike touring, to just jump in and not worry too much about the details. And, again, the people I met along the way were so nice. I had a bike shop owner who did some work on my bike. Everyone was so supportive of the trip that I was on and then, at the culmination of it all, I arrived at the wedding and I got to see all my closest friends and spend time outside and we just had a great time at the wedding and I just thought, “Wow, bike touring is the best!” Because it brought me to an experience like that. And the band Old Crow Medicine Show was there as the musicians for the wedding. They’re a really fun band and they’re known now, but at the time they were smaller, and that was the one thing that the father of the bride wanted, was to bring really great music to the wedding, and so we got to sit around and jam with them around the campfire at night and, just a really cool experience, entirely made better by the fact that I had gotten there by bike.
Gabriel: I really like that you are thinking of doing it again with your family.
Ayleen: Yeah definitely.
Gabriel: Well, let’s get back to Filmed by Bike, because it obviously was successful and it grew. Can you just tell a little bit about the evolution over those 20 years of the festival?
Ayleen: Sure. Filmed by Bike grew every year and the bicycle community of Portland really supported the festival and came out for it every year. In the beginning, we were a very local festival, so our films came from the region and our attendees came from the region. In our third year we moved to an independent theater, a proper theater with theater seats, that was new to us. And around that time there was a group out of Seattle who would come down on the train for Filmed by Bike every year, and that was really fun. There were years that Amtrak sold out of all their spaces for bicycle storage because people were coming down from Seattle, and that was around the time that we realized we needed to look into selling tickets online in advance, because those Seattle folks would come down and tickets would already be sold out by the time they got here, but we had other days. They could go on the other days of the festival but they couldn’t go that day that they arrived. So they said, “Hey, have you ever considered selling tickets online?” You know, this was a long time ago. That wasn’t as common back then. We thought, oh, that sounds cool. Yeah, that’s neat. We should look into that. Every year, we listened to the community, we heard what people wanted, I made adjustments to the festival. Every year was new and fresh and different, but a lot of the themes were the same. We were showing great movies, we were bringing people together. One of our filmmakers really phrased it best. He said, “Filmed by Bike truly puts the ‘festival’ in film festival.” That was very important to us. We used to close off the street, open up the street for a street party, there was music and dancing and a beer garden and all sorts of activities. That was really important to us in the early days of the festival because we were, we had a goal of bringing people together, and when you go into the theater and the lights go down and it’s dark and you’re watching these movies together, it doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, what kind of riding you’re into or even if you do ride a bike. We could all sit there, laugh at the same funny moments, cry at the sad moments, and enjoy these movies together. And then it wasn’t until the lights went on that you realized, oh, it was, you know, a dirtbag cyclist sitting next to a pristine, kitted-out roadie. You know, it was just a great bringing together of people and I always loved that about the festival. It really brought out such a variety of people, and it was so celebratory and so vibrant. Over the years we grew and eventually, the local, really beautiful historic theater that we have here, the Hollywood Theater, came knocking and asking us if we would consider moving our theater home to their theater. And we eventually did that, and it was such a lovely decision, because that theater is beautiful, it’s very well run, the staff was amazing to work with, there’s a membership program there, so they’re dedicated people that go to pretty much anything that’s going on at the theater. They show up, and so the neighborhood would come out in droves for our festival at that theater and just lots of great community support every year. And we did eventually wind up letting our street party go away, because it was such a huge undertaking and it was always a financial loss for us to run that street party, so we decided to focus more on the movie experience and investing our time in our filmmaker community, and getting to know and support our filmmakers, because without them we didn’t have a film festival. So we wanted to make sure that they felt really well supported throughout the whole process of being involved in the festival. And also around that time, we started to make more connections with the filmmaking community, and the film community especially here in Portland, and that’s really where we catapulted from being just a bicycle event to being a film event, and really having deeper, richer film ties and celebrating the cinematic quality of the work that was being shown on screen, and that really scratched a niche for me, because as an artist I really wanted that artistic side to shine through as much as the community building and the bicycle side of things.
Gabriel: Wow, cool evolution of the festival, and sorry to see that the street festival part went away, but I can understand. It must have been just amazing for people who participated.
Ayleen: Yeah, it really was. You know, a lot of other communities would see that vibrancy and non-profits. And bicycle endeavors in other communities are always so hard-pressed to put something together where they can raise funds for the good work that they’re doing, and the actual planning of an event is so extreme and it takes so much time and energy and cost that we were eventually able to offer Filmed by Bike as a packaged program that people could show in other communities, just like the Banff Film Festival travels or the Wild and Scenic Film Festival that travels to other places. We offer this now, it still exists, as an opportunity for people. No matter where they live, they can bring Filmed by Bike to their community and we offer a package program of films and all the marketing resources that they need to put on the show themselves and to keep 100 percent of the proceeds from those shows so all over the world there are groups showing Filmed by Bike and we’re able to export a little bit of our excitement about bike culture and bring these curated programs to other cities. And that’s really the evolution of Filmed by Bike to grow from this bicycle- friendly community and the spirit of sharing the road and working together and building community and to be able to export a little bit of that to these other communities as we help them raise funds for their own community endeavors. I can’t emphasize enough how cool that is, and how easy it is to get those shows started. Some of the cities that host Filmed by Bike have been hosting for more than 10 years. Ithaca New York and Boise, Idaho. There was a statewide organization in Idaho, the Idaho Walk Bike Alliance, hosted shows all throughout the state of Idaho, and so I really want to encourage listeners, if they have a bicycle community that they’re looking to galvanize or grow or raise funds for projects, it’s such a neat opportunity without having to find the films or create a film festival yourself. It’s already there for you and it’s there to support community endeavors. The Filmed by Bike website has all the information on hosting a Film by Bike event, and the new owners, Eric and Alden, who are awesome, are happy to talk through that process with people. They are also filmmakers, they’re cyclists, they’re bike tourists, they’ve got it all. So they’re awesome, and I’m so thrilled to see the film festival in their hands now. They and their team are going to do great things with the festival.
Gabriel: So I have to interview Alden next.
Ayleen: Great! You know, the funny thing is, when he first approached us with the concept of taking on Filmed by Bike and I heard about the kind of events that he did, I thought, well, those are the kind of movies we show, because our audience loves to see those wild adventures of people going to these far off, extremely rugged places, like the Silk Road mountain bike event. It’s just really impressive, the type of riding he does. And then Eric, the other main owner of the festival, has done a lot of bike touring and has a popular YouTube channel where he shares his journey as someone who’s diabetic and tours by bike.
Gabriel: Well maybe Alden will introduce me to Eric and he’ll be yet another guest on the show.
Ayleen: That would be great.
Gabriel: Have you met some of the filmmakers and heard their stories?
Ayleen: One of our favorite filmmakers at Filmed by Bike over the years, that we showed many of his films, was Joey Schusler, out of I believe Boulder, Colorado. And he, definitely Colorado, I’m not positive it’s Boulder. Anyway, he is a rugged, rugged rider, like, Silk-Mountain-Road-style. He would go to Kyrgyzstan, he would go to Mongolia, ride through these areas that don’t have a designated bike route. He’s just making it happen. He would bring all of his camera equipment and he would document it. And he’s a beautiful storyteller, so they were captivating films that really just drew you in, and the landscapes and the beauty of the place, you really got a sense of where they were in their journey, and the hardships and the beauty and the people they met along the way. But then I think about that, because he’s out there sleeping in a tiny tent and he definitely has to be concerned with the weight that he’s carrying and he’s on these rugged roads and he’s bringing this very expensive high end equipment with him. The nice thing is that over the years film equipment really has come down both in… in some ways in cost but also in size and so people are able to travel with pretty high-quality equipment that doesn’t have to be as large as it once was, but it’s still quite a commitment and you have to be careful not to break it even though you’re in these rugged situations and your luggage is being thrown around as you’re, you know, doing your transport to get from here to the next point, and then riding on these rugged roads. So it’s always been really fascinating and impressive to me. Whenever we were able to bring filmmakers to the festival, to give people a chance to meet them and hear more about their story, I always loved having the filmmakers who worked on bike touring pieces, because it was a chance to hear more about their equipment and those logistics and how they were able to make that happen, and then translate that to the big screen with these beautiful films that they wove together from that adventure.
Gabriel: The equipment has gotten lighter, but keep in mind though that now there’s also the drone. You have to have the drone with you and you have to have the Steadicam so that when you’re riding it’s looking smooth. Sometimes, you have a cyclist, and they actually have a team of people that are kind of behind the scenes, and it’s all supposed to be very, yeah, rugged and in reality it’s not as unsupported, because you have this team that’s gathering film and carrying some of the gear. So just as a final point, did you encounter any of those situations where there was a cyclist and then there was at least one or two other people following them at a distance?
Ayleen: Every once in a while, but those types of projects tend to be a little bit more involved and that tends to be a little bit more of the commercial work. It might be a brand piece that presents as just a story, but is actually a brand-produced piece and Filmed by Bike has a jury every year that reviews all the film submissions to determine which films make the cut, because there’s not enough time within the festival to show everything that’s submitted, and our jury has always been very discerning if a film seems overly commercialized, overly branded, they would not rate that highly. And so we generally didn’t see a lot of the films that had those huge budgets to be able to afford a support crew, but filmmakers like Joey Schusler, at least in his early days when we saw his work, he was the rider and he was with other riders but he was the sole filmmaker in a lot of cases.
Gabriel: Oh, yeah.
Ayleen: That’s so neat to see the people that can juggle all of that themselves and there certainly are examples of films that have more of a crew, but often those are the films that don’t resonate as much with the Filmed by Bike audience.
Gabriel: Sometimes the filmmakers who are also the protagonists, they need to be careful about what their role is, and is their trip being in some way influenced by the fact that they’re making a movie about it and are they going about it differently because they’re recording it? So, there are real issues of authenticity and purpose that come up, and I’m sure some people are able to navigate that just fine, but it’s an interesting point, and it extends also to social media. People who might be documenting their trip, they might spend hours just setting up their camera, riding past, looking at it… Oh! Redoing the shot. You know, and at that point it’s not really bike touring anymore as much as filming a bicycle trip. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Ayleen: We received so many submissions over the years that were people wanting to share an experience that they had on a bicycle tour and the vast majority of those films weren’t very interesting, because it was the rider just showing us everything they saw. Maybe they edit it down but there was no story. Why? Why should I care? I don’t know you. Why should I be watching this, right? So the filmmakers who really stood out and the riders who really stood out were the ones that could tell that story and weave something together that drew us in and carried us through the journey and the adventure. You know, it’s great if somebody has an interest in making a movie and they want to try, I’m so supportive, and over the years Filmed by Bike really supported burgeoning filmmakers, first-time filmmakers, and all of that. That’s a big focus of what we were supportive of. I do think about folks who are out there on a tour, there is this, I don’t know, a feeling that you’re supposed to document these days, and instead of just being there and enjoying it and taking it all in and not worry about how you are curating it to share with other people, because we’ll never be able to experience what somebody experiences in their own body and in their mind when they’re out there. And so sometimes I think, oh, just leave your phone or camera down and just be there, and don’t worry about trying to show it to other people, because we’ll never experience it the way you did, and you’ll never experience it the same way if you’re worried about or consuming your mind with the idea of trying to capture it for other people instead of just being there and being in the moment and meeting people and taking it all in.
Gabriel: Yeah, and that brings us back I guess to Aunt Kathy’s The Road Between Us, which had the amazing benefit of having Christopher Briscoe as the protagonist and the photographer, which helped with some of those amazing visuals.
Ayleen: Yeah.
Gabriel: They were actually his photographs, and I think he was a person who was able to maintain that balance between being in the moment and actually documenting it. And there’s some funny little clips about his son going, “Wait what? Not again! Do we have to do this again? Why are we stopping?” So, you know, it definitely influenced the film, but it was a success in the end, because it’s clear that the priority was in the father- son time together.
Ayleen: Exactly. It was a longer film in terms of what Filmed by Bike usually showed at the time, and to think that that film was so captivating even though it was mostly photographs.
Gabriel: Well, hopefully Aunt Kathy heard that too. There’s a little bonus for her.
Ayleen: Hundred percent, yes. And the other thing I wanted to mention is that, for anybody who’s looking for a bit of vibrancy in their bicycle life in the summertime, it’s an excellent time to visit Portland, where every day of the week there are free bicycle events happening through our Bike Summer festival. All throughout the day, every day, you can meet up with other people who love bikes and enjoy coffee or go swimming or go on a distance ride through some of our forest land here or take a little tour of the city. It’s such a neat way to meet people, it’s an awesome way to see our city, and these rides are led by just regular folks, individuals. And as our country gets more and more disjointed and fractured and people move into different camps with political beliefs, just getting together on bikes and sharing time together, moving through the world on two wheels, I just think it’s really important meeting each other where we are and just sharing time together. Such a great way to combat all the negativity that’s out there. And, again, as I started off this call talking about, I’m a firm believer that that negativity we hear about, it exists but it is not the entirety of what’s really happening in our society and in humanity. There’s so much more happening, and I want to see us focused on that and making time for those in-person connections with other people, and cycling is such a beautiful way to do that.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Ayleen: That was Rev Phil, Reverend Phil.
Gabriel: And when you say Reverend, I mean, is that an unusual first name or is he, is he an ordained priest or what is this reverend?
Ayleen: Oh, I believe he might be ordained through the Universal Life Church which just about anyone… anyone can get ordained through.