Status updates from a bike tour (and friendship) unravelling

Right now my friend Eric Farr (of Honeyman and the Brothers Farr and the Hidden Words) is working with the International Development and Relief Foundation and his main job is running the Mother’s Day Bike Challenge that will take a group of volunteers from different faiths from Toronto to Ottawa to raise money the organization’s maternal health work in Asia and Africa.  Just a few weeks ago I joined Eric on on a bike ride to run through the route and marry Eric’s foolish optimism with my actual experience planning bike tours with the Otesha Project.

The tour turned out to be a total disaster that cost us our friendship and very nearly our very lives.  Unlike many Facebook users who use their profiles that project a version of their lives that is filled only with weddings, concerts and puppy dogs, Eric and I had the courage to say petty things about each other to all our friends.

For all you people who prefer to wait for your show’s season to end so that you can download the whole thing and blast through it in just a few sittings, here now is every episode of this story in order with some of our favorite comments.

Day one: Toronto to Pickering

From my wall:

Eric writes:

Day two: Pickering to Cobourg

We both posted that morning before hitting the road:

That night Eric gathered his strength to write:

My account of the experience:

Day three: Cobourg to Belleville

Lots of activity on day three.  It all started with some yoga, I wrote:

Saavasana expert Eric shared:

Our kind Cobourg host Mr. Darrell Flewell posted this photo:

Eric changed his profile picture:

As did I:

That night both shared a video:


Here it is:

At some point that day one of our mutual friends found a comparison to make:

Day four: Belleville to Kingston

Day four had its ups and downs.  That morning I shared this photo:

Later on Eric also shared a photo:

It’s possible that we may not have taken the most direct route to Kingston.  Here is a previously unreleased video from that afternoon:

Late that night Eric whined:

While I celebrated:

Day five: Kingston to Perth

A former colleague of mine claimed to spot us getting out of a car that morning in Kingston:

Here is the video, likely directed by special effects wizard James Cameron:

Late that night from Perth, Eric gave the following status update:

I updated my status to share a number of discoveries:

Day six: Perth to Ottawa

Another strange night for Longneck.  That morning he shared a photo with the following incoherent caption:

I updated my status to ask a question:

Later on that morning Farr reports:

My version:

At some point that day Carolyne Gardner, our host in Pickering, shared her thoughts:

But by then it was too late.

The aftermath

Safe at home, we both had a new video to share:

Here is that video:

The epilogue

The final chapter in our story came in the form of a YouTube video released to Facebook about a week after the tour ended.  Eric Farr pompously writes:

I had this to say:

Here’s the video:

The Mother’s Day Bike Challenge

The actual tour is hitting the road next Wednesday on the 9th of May.  In his typical foolish optimism, Eric has set himself the ambitious goal of raising $2000 to go towards the International Development and Relief Foundation’s important maternal health projects.  Click here to pitch in what you can to help him reach his goal.

Holding back the alien vampire-zombies on Blue Team One: The Toronto Regional Baha’i Conference

My main-man Ilya Zrudlo on his work in Montreal neighborhoods

Two weeks before Toronto’s Regional Baha’i Conference (one of 41 across the world) , I received an e-mail from Albert Wong asking if I would be a member of the security team, I agreed, and two weeks later I found myself in a meeting room in at a Toronto hotel on the eve of the conference with the rest of the security team.  We were divided into four sub-teams with really cool names like Blue Team One and Green Team Two. I was strategically placed in Blue Team One, which was clearly the most highly specialized team because it also had my friend Marjan Bachelor in it.  We took the role super seriously and expected to be briefed on what to do in case you suspect that one of conference attendees is a shape-shifting alien, a vampire, a zombie or heaven forbid, an alien vampire-zombie.

This is me being ready for alien vampire-zombies, not being one. Subtle difference.

Rather then to run through the protocol of what to do in case of volcanic eruption, giant moth attack or alien vampire-zombie breakout, Albert spent most of the orientation meeting recounting stories from the 1992 Baha’i World Congress when 35,000 Baha’is from around the world descended on New York City to mark the 100th anniversary of the passing of Baha’u'llah.  My sister and I were “too young” at the time so our parents put us on grandparent’s front stoop in Cornwall, Ontario, rang the doorbell and sped off hooting and hollering.  If you were to go to that street now, you will find that the tire marks are still there to this very day.  We spent the four days watching cable TV and eating so many clementines that we both vomited.  Delicious, juicy clementines.

Probably an alien vampire-zombie

Albert’s stories illustrated how the spirit of service and flexibility among the security team and the love and excitement of the Baha’is saw them through several unexpected situations and made it a conference that people were still talking about 17 years later in a meeting room in a Toronto hotel and on the internet on blogs that nobody reads.  Some of these unexpected situations included everyone being booted out of the building they were meeting in, where the Baha’is lined several blocks and naturally broke out into song.  When a pickpocket came, the security team kept an eye on her as the Baha’is taught her the Faith.  The other story was of the old Baha’i from a remote Pacific Island who was separated from his group.  He could not speak any of the many languages that the assembled members of security team could, so they spent the night laughing and simply saying ‘Allah-u-abha!’ (‘God the All-Glorious’) to each other.

Congress Centre staff have a huddle

We donned our tags that read ‘Host/Hostess’ with little red ribbons hanging off of them, and we were as ready as were ever going to be.  While our conference was was not engulfed in lava, attacked by Mothra and no conference participants showed signs of being alien vampire-zombies, we did still have our fair share of unexpected situations.  You could say we had about a thousand of them, because the original expectation was for about 3,000 people to attend and there ended up being way over 4,000.  While the security team had a plan of who was going to be where at what time, I found myself a part of many conversations that went something like this:

“What are you doing right now?  Are you free?”

“Umm, well Elly told me to stay here and-”

“-Follow me!  We need more people managing the lines!  Come on!”

My off-duty times were perhaps more frantic than on.  There were so many people there that I would be lucky to run into an old friend I hadn’t seen in years more than once.  But, that wasn’t really the point of the whole conference, now was it?

The only moments of clarity came to me during the talks delivered by the representatives from the Baha’i World Centre Ms. Uransaikhan Baatar and Mr. Stephen Birkland, who placed into spacial and temporal context the work of each individual, community and institution that has been carrying out the Baha’i and Baha’i inspired activities that they have been witnessing binding their communities and families together.

Click here for my tiny set of photos from the conference.  Seeing jet-setting professional photographer Ryan Lash climbing pillars and light fixtures to get the perfect shot, it was clear that it was covered by far more capable hands and cameras.  For the Baha’i World News Service’s article on the conference with photos and a video, click here.

There was a great musical showcase on the Saturday night that featured songs from across the region that have inspired communities in their work, and below is one of my favorites. It features Kieth Bartlett with his daughters Natania Hatala and Tahirih North singing a traditional Southern American song, and a version of the Baha’i prayer ‘Is there any remover of difficulties’.  It was my first time meeting him after I recently heard about him and how be preformed at my parent’s wedding in Gatineau, Quebec back in 1981.