On Sunday, Brian Fanelli, the events coordinator at Recovery Bike Shop and Re-Cycle, organized a storytelling group ride titled Spinning Stories. A few dozen cyclists rode together to three different spots in the Twin Cities, where three different storytellers — Taylor Tower, Tristan Jimerson and Amy Salloway — weaved them a tale about the place they'd pedaled to.
Spinning Stories is a storytelling series, as Fanelli describes it, where "storytellers ride us to the places where their stories first happened." He explains that bike rides are inherently good fodder for storytelling, because bicycling leads to adventures. "Because of the way storytelling and bicycling are so intertwined," Fanelli says, "it felt completely natural to meld those two communities into something new."
The ride's first spin was from Tower, who performed a piece titled "The Huck Finn Fantasy" on the banks of the Mississippi River. Its second story, about life in a bookstore, was by Jimerson, who told his tale at a park near St. Paul's Midway Books. The final story was Amy Salloway's "Real Actor," a "raucously funny" piece, according to Fanelli, that "speaks to the insecurities we all feel when taking on a new persona."
Spinning Stories is a super-cool combination of two things I love: stories and bikes. I'm sad I missed its debut (Northern Minnesota had, with its lakes and long, bike-delicious country roads, lured me away from the Twin Cities). The good news, though, is that Fanelli is staging a sequel on July 19!
Check out Fanelli's full recap of the first ride, and stay tuned for updates on the next installment, at http://morethanabicycle.tumblr.com.
All photos by Brian Fanelli.
