Hello All!
Franc here, Naya and I are in Indonesia. There are five thousand different kinds of crazy bikes here. Taxi bikes called becak which hold a passenger up front, bikes with huge trailers attached to the front forks, little old men on bikes piled high with every kind of colorful plastic imaginable so that the bike is no longer recognizable as a bike but some kind of bouncing plastic thing for sale. Bikes with a little traveling restaurant up front complete with propane stove and display rack. There are bikes with umbrellas attached, hanpdainted bikes in a million crazy colors, and bike components welded into a colorful array of ingenious design.
All of these bikes exist in a place which might be the least managable to bike in the world. Jakarta is hell for biking... there are way too many cars. That is an understatement. There are so many cars and motorcycles that the air is thick with pungent brown smoke that chokes the sun and every living thing on the ground. People wear masks on the street just to breathe. The car exhaust smells like a pungent propane, sweeter and more vile than the car exhaust back home. Traffic jams are a normal part of life. I have spent far too many hours bouncing along in Naya's mom's tiny car through the traffic jams that snake through the winding roads of this city. People pretty much make up the traffic laws and roads that are barely large enough for two cars fit sometimes three lanes of traffic fighting to go somewhere with a thousand motorcycles zipping in and out and a swarm of people managing to walk somewhere on the siding. And in all of this, people still bike.
Yesterday there was a bike parade. The largest street in Jakarta was closed off. We missed it.
The government controls the gas price here, and it was just doubled. A lot of people demonstrated and some speculate that the bombs in Bali were meant to coincide with the news for larger coverage. The bike parade and some articles in the paper offer some glimmer of hope that the gas prices might influence some people to stop driving and start biking.
Anyway. I hope you all are doing well. Let me know if the FREAKS dvd got there in one piece. I worked on it as much as possible in Wisconsin and I'd like to hear what y'all think of it. Say howdy to Danger and Miss Robin for me.
Naya sends her love, so do I,
Franc/Justin
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