Last Friday, the band Joybox Express completed their bike trek across Michigan with a 10-mile ride around Detroit. What’s unique is they bike with their instruments, which includes a 352-pound piano. The ride was a celebration of bicycling and music as well as a fundraiser for Earthworks Urban Farm and The Hub of Detroit.

From their website:

Whatever we are, and want to become, all of us who pedaled across the state these last two weeks are enriched, and satisfied in ways that are hard to describe. We’ve loved every part of it, the interminable, grinding rides, the chance to play music together everyday, and the times spent with the people we’ve partnered with or just met along our route. It’s all been so uplifting, a casual conversation about it doesn’t do it justice, I think I’ll have to let it percolate a bit to savor it completely. This is just a bike ride, right? Why the need for hyperbole? No, it wasn’t just a bike ride, and exaggeration isn’t really possible in explaining the reactions we saw people experience as we did what we did, both for, and with them.

We made this movie during their performance at the Heidelberg Project, but perhaps the more fun was the previous unplanned stop along the often desolate East Ferry Street. Besides the cyclists, the audience included a group of men taking shelter in the shade. It was a wacky and impulsive moment, which seems to fit well with the overall Joybox Express theme.

One of the more entertaining moments was hearing a club rider unfamiliar with Detroit group rides tell everyone to ride two-by-two. That request went unheeded as did the earlier suggestion about stopping at stop signs. Detroit riders corked and kept the group together and moving safely through Detroit.

There are additional photos on the Downtown Ferndale bike shop web site.

Tags: Detroit, Group ride, Joybox Express

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 11:30 am and is filed under Detroit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.