Michael Paliotta and his younger brother Will in the lobby of the Ann Arbor Ice Cube. Michael's family was visiting from Connecticut – he lives in Ann Arbor with a host family while participating in the USA Hockey National Team Development Program here. (Photo by the writer.)

In a lobby filled with well-dressed young men, proud parents and assorted siblings, Gene and Sue Salaniuk stood back together and took in the scene.

They watched as Michael Paliotta, one of two teenage hockey players who currently lives in their house, talked with his parents amid a cluster of family members – two brothers and a sister – who’d made the trip to Ann Arbor from Westport, Conn., just to watch him play.

Six-year-old Will Paliotta stuck close, quietly playing with the buttons on his big brother’s suit jacket.

“I think Michael misses his brothers and sister,” Sue said softly, leaning toward Gene. He nodded and said, “Look how Will won’t let go of him.”

Two months ago, these people were strangers. But for the Salaniuks, Michael is now one of “their” kids; Will and the rest of the Paliottas are one of “their” families.

The Salaniuks have been hosting hockey players from the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in their Ann Arbor home for 13 years. Every few years they’ll tell the program’s housing coordinators that this will be their last. Then another bunch of 16- and 17-year olds come in and, well, they haven’t said, “no” yet. Their hockey family just keeps growing.

“We knew we were getting the kids; we didn’t know we were getting the families, too,” Sue said. “These families tend to be really close-knit and supportive; to get a player to this level they really have to be, so you see the families a lot. We’ve met a lot of nice families and nice boys.”

Players come from all over the country to play on the NTDP Under-17 and Under-18 teams, and accepting a spot means leaving home as a high school junior to live and train in Ann Arbor. The Salaniuks weren’t particularly interested in hockey when they answered an advertisement for NTDP billet families. But their middle child had just left home; their youngest was a high school sophomore. They’d had teenagers around for several years already, and it seemed like a nice chance to get to know people from other places – like an exchange student without the language barrier.

There are 44 teens in the program this year, living with 33 local host families. The hardest part might be the cooking, since players down 5,000-6,000 calories a day. The program gives billet families a $305 monthly stipend to help cover the cost.

“In a typical day they each eat about twice the amount of food I’d cook for one person,” Sue said.

But coming home to good company and a hot meal means a lot to a 16-year-old who may have never spent more than a few weeks away from home. And the relationships that develop between billet families and player families make that transition easier on both ends.

Robbie Russo, part of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program, playing at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube. His family lives in Chicago, and he stays with an Ann Arbor host family while training here. (Photo by the writer.)

“Robbie was on his way home from camp when he called and said they’d offered him a spot (in the program),” said Debbie Russo, whose son also stays with the Salaniuks. “The rest of the day I felt sick to my stomach.

“But it was great once we met Sue and Gene. They made it a lot easier, and when we heard they’d been doing it so long … I mean obviously they’re good people if they keep asking them to do this.”

Thanks to a weekend home series with the Green Bay Gamblers of the USHL earlier this month, both the Russos and the Paliottas are in the stands when The Chronicle meets Sue outside the Ann Arbor Ice Cube’s stadium rink. She finds Debbie Russo, along with a gaggle of Russo family and friends who’ve made the trip from Chicago, and we sit down to chat.

It’s good hockey, and we talk about the quality of play, the previous night’s game (a 5-1 loss) and the fact that the NTDP teams regularly play older, more experienced opponents.

“The speed and athleticism is really impressive,” says Sue, a yoga instructor. “I’ve gotten used to the violence. It still bothers me, but some of the NHL fathers we’ve had say it keeps the really nasty stuff from building up. I don’t know. I still don’t like it.”

Sue points out that most of the Green Bay Gamblers don’t have full shields on their helmets, which means they’re over 18. Minors have to wear a full facemask, she explains. Once they turn 18 a lot of players opt for a half shield that just protect their eyes.

Russo turns to The Chronicle and we shrug simultaneously: “I didn’t know that.”

Sue’s on to a motherly discussion of a chest cold that’s going around when defenseman Barrett Kaib runs a Gambler into the boards right in front of us.

Michael Paliotta (54) on the ice during a game against the Green Bay Gamblers. (Photo by the writer.)

“Ohhhh Barrett!” she hollers, clapping as the walls echo the hit.

Kaib spends so much time at the Salaniuks that Sue has started calling him “our third kid.”

“He was really steamed after the last game,” she says “He’s such a quiet little kid… very polite.”

It takes a village to develop a national team, and billet parents play a lot of roles – chaperone, ambassador, sounding board. They go to Pioneer High School curriculum nights and parent-teacher conferences, help players with neckties when it’s time to go to the rink on game day.

Gene, a retired American Airlines pilot, volunteers to work the penalty box at home games.

“I get to talk to the boys when they come to visit,” he says with a mischievous smile.

Gene and Sue’s hockey family includes “boys” at Harvard, Yale, the University of Maine and the University of Wisconsin. They have one playing in London, Ontario in the Ontario Hockey League and a couple who’ve bounced back and forth between the American Hockey League and the National Hockey League. One calls almost every week.

Robbie, Sue informs us, has already committed to Notre Dame.

“That’s our third Notre Dame player,” Sue says. “We had one that graduated with honors.”

Only their own kids can say if Gene and Sue have always been this adept at dealing with teenagers, but you get the feeling very little rattles them. Whether it’s the demands of the NTDP schedule or general teenage barrier-testing, they’ve been there.

Once or twice Gene’s had to to reel in a kid who tried to sneak out after curfew, and every now and then a player will arrive back in Ann Arbor on Christmas day because the team leaves for a European tournament on Dec. 26.

“We just fill an extra stocking,” Sue says.

Sue Salaniuk, far left, talks to Trish Paliotta during a recent hockey game at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube. Paliotta's son Michael lives with the Salaniuks in Ann Arbor while taking part in the USA Hockey National Team Development Program here. The Paliottas are from Connecticut – sitting next to Trish are Kate, Mike, and Danny, with Will in front. (Photo by the writer.)

When Michael Paliotta earned a spot in the NTDP, his family threw a party and decorated the house in red, white and blue. His brother, Danny, baked a cake and his dad made a toast. Michael stood up and told everyone that this was his dream.

Trish Paliotta remembers when he was four and he’d come and sit on their bed at 4:30 a.m., fully dressed, ready for someone to take him to the rink.

“Neither of us knew anything about hockey,” she said. “I really thought it was a flash in the pan. I thought he’d find another sport, I really did.”

But now he’s living his dream. What can you do but haul the family 600 miles when there’s a chance to be together and trust he’ll be treated like family when you’re not there?

“I know they keep a close eye on the boys, but give them a little bit of leash, too,” Trish said. “We hear that Gene is a great cook, that Sue is easy to talk to, that Gene’s got a great sense of humor… So far it’s been a great experience. He’s really proud to wear the uniform, and I sleep well. I know he’s safe and still enjoying himself. It’s one of those opportunities of a lifetime.”

About the author: Amy Whitesall is a freelance writer based in Chelsea.

A moment of rest for the familiar red kickball. (Photo by the writer.)

The red playground ball scuffs across the dirt the same way it did when you were 10, and the kicker takes a mighty running swipe at it, hoping for one of those big, arcing kicks that no one can get to – or maybe a line drive that will tattoo the ball’s cross-hatch pattern onto some unlucky infielder’s forearms.

It’s Friday night at Veterans Memorial Park, and all four of the park’s softball fields have a kickball game underway. Welcome to the big kids’ playground.

Ann Arbor Rec & Ed started its first kickball league in 2005 with six teams. This summer there were 38. Team sports director Larry Dishman compares the vibe to the early 1970s, when folks of dubious athletic cred were coming out in even bigger numbers to play a laid-back, social sport called slow-pitch softball.

“You had people saying, ‘Well, I can play this game,’” Dishman said. “Right now you’ve got largely that same type of phenomenon happening with kickball.”

Twenty-eight teams signed up for the fall season, which runs through October. (Kickball, incidentally, features some of the best names in Ann Arbor recreational sports: Miracle on Dirt, We Got the Runs, Kicking Balls and Taking Names, Kick It to The Man…)

“It’s a blast,” said Ben Pierce, manager of The Untouchables, which on this night is opening its season against a team called Jiminy Kick It. Last fall Pierce and a buddy from work ran their own kickball league in Ypsilanti.

“It’s competitive; you get to run around,” he said. “We played like three times a week last year. This (Rec & Ed league) is even more competitive, and more fun.”

Across the diamond, The Chronicle learns that most of the members of Jiminy Kick It met in preschool – their kids’ preschool – Northstar Montessori in Saline. None of the kids are in preschool anymore, but they still come along on Friday night to play in the dirt by the bleachers while their parents play in the dirt between the chalked lines.

“No pressure, no outs,” someone calls from the sideline as a Jiminy player sets up behind the plate, staring down pitcher Jason Yax of The Untouchables.

But of course, there’s really no pressure anyway.

“As soon as somebody gets competitive, we’re like, ‘It’s kickball.” said Jennifer Fansler.

Jason Yax from The Untouchables gets ready to pitch to the kicker on team Jiminy Kick It, playing at Veterans Memorial Park in Ann Arbor. (Photo by the writer.)

Jiminy pitcher Rick Gilbert wanders past the bench, where coach Katie Lyons is explaining how her team mostly learns by failure, and how she got her position by default because she’d played softball in high school.

“How much are we winning by,” Gilbert asks.

Lyons glances at her clipboard. “Negative two.”

Now, if anyone tries to tell you kickball isn’t competitive, they’re lying. It’s a contest. Someone wins and someone loses. It’s competitive by definition.

But it’s not cutthroat.

“You look for the person who looks like they’re not going to catch it and you aim for them,” said Pierce.

OK, not too cutthroat.

Pierce says despite a certain amount of playground mentality, the people he plays with now are much better behaved than the schoolyard players of yesteryear.

So that’s the benefit of 20-some years of maturity?

Nah, he says. Umps.

“I remember arguing a lot (as a kid),” Pierce said. “Now we don’t argue because we have the ump here to tell us to shut up.”

Nonetheless, Rec & Ed recreation specialist Sean Williams says umpires clamor to work the kickball games. It’s refreshingly different than small-ball counterpart.

Umpire Terry Condit has been officiating kickball games for three years. Before that he did high-level men’s softball. It took him half a season to adjust to the culture shift between men’s softball – with its high incidence of players who believe they’re just a step shy of the major leagues – to kickball, with its high incidence of players who routinely show up late.

Karla Tensley from Jiminy Kick It plays first base as runner Ben Pierce of The Untouchables gets ready to make a play for second. Pierce is also team manager. (Photo by the writer.)

He worked one game last summer where one of the teams showed up with every player dressed as a superhero.

“One woman was dressed as Isis, and I had to have her take off all these heavy bracelets, and her crown,” he said. “I had to make another guy take off his head because he could hardly see. Come to think of it, he wasn’t walking too well, either.”

(Public service disclaimer: Alcohol is not allowed in city parks. That’s all we’re going to say about that.)

So why kickball? Well, you don’t have to be a superhero – or even an athlete – to play, for one thing. Everyone’s there to have a good time, to laugh and run and wear a T-shirt with a nickname on the back. A lot of people find it’s just like they remember from fourth grade – only better.

“I don’t know that I ever played it as a kid,” said Chris Graham, whose T-shirt bears the nickname “Stay-Puft.” “So it was strange at first because I get to be athletic. That’s unusual for me.”

In the late innings Jiminy Kick It begins to show signs of wear. Karla Tensley, a runner in recreational real life, is stretching her right leg, trying to ease out the knot where a kicked ball hit her in the hamstring. Gilbert is sidelined with an eye injury. He sits on the bleachers, trying to shake it off.

He squints hard with his right eye, blinks, squints again.

He was playing with the kids, and one of them poked him in the eye.

A spectator watches a play not-quite-made and shrugs, “It’s better than watching the Lions.”

About the author: Amy Whitesall is a freelance writer based in Chelsea.

Two Chronicle volunteers try their hand at spaceball. Don Botsford is in the foreground. (Photo by the writer.)

Or so we thought.

Last February Botsford, now 80, installed the court in his new gym, a 2,000-square-foot pole structure on his 20-acre nature preserve on the outskirts of town. It’s one of the few places in the world where people can still play spaceball – a game once dominated by players from Ann Arbor – and probably one of the few places in the world where anyone knows what it is.

“It’s a fun, silly game; it’s good exercise, and if you could get more people to play it they would get addicted,” said Washtenaw County prosecutor Brian Mackie, whose competitive spaceball career in the 1960s took him to distant shores (Cleveland) along with Botsford and two other players from Ann Arbor.

So What the Heck Is Spaceball?

Spaceball involves elements of basketball (throw the ball through the cylinder) and volleyball (get the ball past your opponent without hitting it out of bounds). This all happens on a court that’s a trampoline. We admit it’s hard to pick up some of the game’s subtleties when you’re bouncing up and down, but even with a sketchy understanding of the rules, the challenge is addictive. It’s not easy to chuck a soft, 8.5 inch diameter ball through a 10-inch horizontal cylinder some 8 or 9 feet off the floor while timing your bounce so that your opponent is down when you’re up.

“You can, when you learn it, exercise more body control and use the back as well as the bed to alter your time in the air,” Mackie said. “You can make the ball do crazy things.”

Botsford recommends using a two-handed overhead toss to shoot the ball – a lot like throwing a soccer ball in-bounds. But on a recent trip to play the game, one of The Chronicle’s volunteers quickly perfected a one-handed, tomahawk slam through the chute. Bolstered by success, he was, for the moment, da’ man.

The 6-foot by 12-foot trampolines are set up at floor level, stretched across a three-foot deep concrete pit. Besides leaving nothing to fall off of, the floor-level tramps create an experience where you step across the floor, take few preliminary bounces and realize you can fly. You can defy gravity, channel you inner superhero, Be Like Mike.

“We’ve gotta get one of these,” raved our senior tester, 12.

“He should do birthday parties,” our 10-year-old junior tester suggested.

Don Botsford's bulletin board of clippings from spaceball's heyday. (Photo by the writer.)

The Early Years

Back in 1956 Botsford opened the Ann Arbor Gymkana in a building on Maple Road, where Top of the Lamp is now located. In 30 years, he says, the gym only finished in the black twice. He always worked an outside job to keep it going. He used to charge kids 50 cents a head to come into the gym on Saturday mornings and bounce to their heart’s content. They took turns on the spaceball court or, if the crowd was big enough, played an elimination-style spaceball game called King of Space.

They could burn all the energy they wanted, as long as they followed the rules – one at a time on the trampolines, and no flips. People’s propensity to get upside-down, in fact, is a big part of the reason Botsford’s insurance is so expensive. Most companies, he says, set the minimum at $10,000 a year as soon as they hear the word “trampoline.”

Botsford, once a collegiate gymnast at Central Michigan University, attributes the steady parade of backyard trampolinists through emergency rooms to a lack of rules and supervision.

“I have a list of 50 tricks that I’ll teach on the trampoline, and the backflip is trick No. 35,” he said. “You have to learn the first 34 before you try a backflip, and by then you’re so comfortable you’ll pick it right up.”

Mackie, who first tried spaceball as a break from weightlifitng at the gymkana, teamed up with a player from the Nissen Trampoline Company and won a doubles championship at a 1966 national meet in Cleveland.

“Cleveland was one dead town back then,” Mackie said. “(The meet) was underground, in the basement of a convention center. It was a weird place to go for a weird thing, but when you’re 17 it’s kind of cool.”

George Nissen, founder of Nissen Trampoline Company, created spaceball back in 1960 as a means of spreading trampoline love to people who wanted to do more than just bounce up and down. It achieved enough notoriety to get a spread in the July 12, 1965 Sport Illustrated magazine. Botsford and five women from the Ann Arbor Gymkana traveled to a New York resort to put on a spaceball demonstration for SI’s photographers during a national trampoline championship.

Don Botsford next to his spaceball court on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. (Photo by the writer.)

“We were probably better known in other areas where they had gymnastics and so forth,” Botsford said. “In Ann Arbor, people hardly knew about us because of the four inches of coverage we’d get.”

Nissen Trampoline made 250 spaceball “courts” like Botsford’s. Other companies made subtly different models, but Botsford says his is one of just 12 originals left in the world. Though he doesn’t advertise the spaceball court – hassles with the county over building codes have so far prevented him from getting the inspection necessary to open for business – family and friends come in and play nonetheless, and word is getting around.

The Botsford Nature Preserve is a regular stop for school groups and camps, and that brings in more spaceball neophytes.

“The other day we had 64 kids out here from the Green Adventure camp, and they let people come in and play spaceball,” Botsford said. “They didn’t get to play for a long time, but they at least got exposed to it. It makes people want to come back.”

About the author: Amy Whitesall is a freelance writer based in Chelsea.

Motown-Ann Arbor Hash House Harriers on a recent run, navigating a shiggy trail in Ypsilanti Township.

At the sound of a toy plastic horn, a pack of runners jogs down a road to nowhere and onto a faint trail in an undeveloped subdivision in Ypsilanti Township. The front runners point out white dots of flour on the ground and holler “On-On!” to let the others know they’re on trail.

When they reach a floury white “X,” one runs ahead in each likely direction to look for the three white dots that mark the real trail. In moments, “On-on” echoes through the woods from one direction and the whole pack turns and plunges down a steep bank, crossing a flooded ditch on what looks like an old section of privacy fence.

As they disappear into the woods, “On-on”s blend with birdsongs and the squawking of a duck. When they emerge, scratched and dirty somewhere on the other side, there will be beer.

The Motown-Ann Arbor Hash House Harriers describe themselves (as do hashers around the world) as a drinking club with a running problem. Some of the club’s 80 members started hashing for the exercise, but they keep hashing for the camaraderie. Any exercise incurred along the way is somewhat incidental – a side effect of getting from one “beer check” to the next.

“It was started by (members of) the British military hoping to get back in shape when there were no wars,” said Nancy “Mother Inferior” Marcott. “But the active description of a hasher who’s been hashing a year would be someone who can run 10 miles interspersed with swimming, rock climbing and large leaping, and has a huge beer belly.”

Nancy "Mother Inferior" Marcott. The water she's running through appears to be colder than the beer in hand.

But you don’t have to drink beer to hash (we’re pretty sure there were non-alcoholic beverages in the cooler, too, and people were seen drinking water, which they must have gotten somewhere). You don’t have to run, don’t have to be a particular age, don’t have to have a  nickname (though if you stick around long enough they’ll gladly give you one you can’t take home to Mother.)

All you really need is a healthy sense of humor (actually, a sick one will do, too) and an old pair of shoes.

Hashes typically cover 4-6 miles on trails that can range from stroller-friendly to “shiggy” (riddled with obstacles including – but not limited to – water, fences and rash-inducing vegetation) with beverage stops along the way. It’s not uncommon to ford knee-deep streams. It’s less common – but not unheard-of – to cross chest-deep, muddy-bottomed ponds. In May.

The pack follows flour or chalk hash marks – dots, arrows, Xs and other signs – to pick out the true trail from any bogus ones the “hare” (the person laying the trail) might have left.

Marcott, who lives in Ann Arbor, has been hashing with the Motown-Ann Arbor group so long that her hash name is often shortened to “Mother” or just “Ma.” She used to be a legitimate runner. After taking some time off she started hashing with the idea that it would get her back into shape. In the 17 years since, Marcott’s role has shifted, nudged along by an arthritic knee. Now she leads a group of walkers at every hash – generally with a copy of the map so they can take the appropriate shortcuts to arrive at the beer check at about the same time as the runners.

There, happy hour ensues – or at least a happy 15 minutes or so – while the day’s designated hare takes off to mark the section of trail that leads to the next beverage stop.

“I’m a competitive runner and I enjoy the not-so-serious nature of this,” said Dave “Diaper Rash” Dysert, from Detroit. “It’s not training, but it’s fun anyway, and there’s always beer afterwards.”

Hashing goes back to 1938 and a group of British expatriates in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s popular with expats around the world because of its ability to create instant community out of the shared silliness. Average age tends to be over 45, but hashers range at least 20 years in either direction. Someone in the Motown-Ann Arbor group hosts a hash just about every weekend through the summer.

Hashers will get the meaning of this bumper sticker.

After the hash, the group of 15-20 gathers at the “on-after” – usually a bar or restaurant – to eat, drink, sing raunchy songs and assess “down-downs” (penalty drinks) for misdeeds real, imagined or blatantly made-up.

Members of the Motown-Ann Arbor group have hashed all over the country and around the world. Larry “Minuteman” Tonda has hashed in Malaysia, England, Ireland, Wales and Costa Rica. Dysert, who runs marathons and ultra-marathons, recently hashed with his wife in Las Vegas, where hashers they’d just met put them up for the night to save them a late 80-mile drive back to Mesquite, Nev.

Likewise, the local hash welcomes visitors from other clubs. Toledo and Bay City hashers were on hand the day The Chronicle tagged along.

“I know people because of hashing that I would never know otherwise,” said Sharin’ Fluids, a registered dietician whose hash name comes from her tendency to encourage people to stay hydrated. (Out of deference to her employer she declined to give her real name, but it’s not Sharon).

When she moved to Ann Arbor in 2006 she didn’t know a soul and says she could hardly walk a block. Someone suggested she try hashing, and through the club she met people of all ages from all over southeastern Michigan, including Mark “Pennsil Vein” Shehan, who’s now her fiancé. Last year, encouraged by other hashers, she ran a half-marathon.

“(To enjoy it) you just have to be an open-minded individual who likes to socialize and be active,” she said. “Your fitness level doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you can only walk, or if you can run six miles. Everyone accepts everyone.”

About the author: Amy Whitesall is a freelance writer based in Chelsea.

Elizabeth Tidd saddled up at the Fourth Avenue parking structure after attending the first organizational meeting for an Ann Arbor Bike Choir.

The idea crystallized for Susan Zielinski 16 years ago, when she was was riding her bike through traffic in Toronto, trying to keep Beethoven’s ninth symphony in her mind as the incessant traffic noises threatened to drive it out.

“What I need,” she thought, “is 20 people riding with me, singing in four-part harmony to drown out the sound of the traffic.”

To humor her, a handful of her friends planned what they thought would be a one-time bike chorale performance during Toronto’s bike week. They called themselves Song Cycles – the Choir on Bikes.

CBC radio called for an interview before they’d even had a rehearsal, and minor celebrity ensued.

Zielinski moved to Ann Arbor three years ago to work on a sustainable transportation project at the University of Michigan, and with the help of Michigan Peaceworks executive director Laura Russello, she’s once again at the hub of a burgeoning bike choir.

The Ann Arbor Bike Choir will make its debut on May 15, as part of getDowntown‘s Bike to Work Day. They’ll perform selections from the Song Cycles repertoire of cheerful, bike-adapted songs, which includes  “The Bicyclized Ode to Joy” and “Way’O” (Adapted from Day ‘O, with the chorus “Freeway is not de only way home.”)

The group is still looking for a director, but 15 people showed up at Arbor Brewing Co. Monday for the bike choir’s first meeting, a healthy start considering the Toronto group began with about five people and maxed out at 25. The Chronicle dropped by to check it out, too.

“I think a lot of us were feeling like we didn’t fit the activist, critical mass stuff,” Zielinski said. “We wanted to show the beauty of the bicycle through music and fun.”

Doug and Elizabeth Tidd ride with the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society and sing in their church choir. Doug found out about the bike choir meeting an hour and a half before it started. He called Elizabeth and headed down to Arbor Brewing to hold down a booth as singer/cyclists and cyclist/singers trickled in. Elizabeth, who’d spent most of her day on jury duty and the rest at work, really wanted to go home. But by the time she unlocked her bike to head home, she couldn’t stop grinning.

“It’s really a fun idea; I’m excited about it,” she said. “I have a friend who rides my speed and we make up songs and sing, scare the animals. I picture (the choir) just singing as we’re riding and promoting happy bicycling.”

As a Peaceworks venture, Russello says this could be something that brings the factions of the cycling community together – road riders, trail riders, commuters, anarchists.

“There’s a club called the Bang Gang,” Russello said. “I don’t know how big they are, but they wear leather jackets and stuff, and do most of their rides at night. I told a couple of members about this and they were really excited.”

Russello met Zielinski at a Peaceworks lecture series on sustainability, and the more they talked about starting a bike choir in Ann Arbor, the more it seems to fit the city’s sensibilities. There’s an environmental part, a social part, an activist part, a just-crazy-enough-to-work part.

Tom Bartlett, owner of Circumference Bicycles, offered use of his conference bike, which – for the six people who get to ride it – will eliminate the challenge of steering while reading music.

Two Wheel Tango founder Dennis Pontius unknowingly primed the Ann Arbor cycling community by naming his store after one of the Toronto choir’s original tunes. Pontius heard Song Cycles perform “Two Wheel Tango” – a song about the virtues of men on bikes – as the background music in a CBC television piece about men’s bike saddles. He thought it was a perfect name for a bike shop, so when he opened his in 1989, that’s what he called it.

“It’s just amazing,”  Zielinski said. “It’s a wonderful mix of people with a good, funny energy. They’re really serious about it, and they’ve got some great ideas. I’m loving being a part of it.”

The Toronto Choir on Bikes performed at festivals, conferences, concerts and demonstrations for 10 years before going their separate ways. They had choreography and bicycle-bell percussion. The director would ride in the front, sharing a tandem bike with a guy playing an accordion. And sometimes, true to Zielinski’s vision, they’d just take over a street with their symphony of self-propelled humanity.

“People just loved it,” said Zielinski, “I think that’s what kept us going. They were so surprised; they’d stop on the streets and laugh and listen. You’d have police officers and you could tell they were thinking, ‘Wait, aren’t you supposed to be in one lane?’ and ‘I really should stop you, but…’ We never had confrontations with them; we didn’t want to push those limits. We pushed enough other limits as it was.”