Biker party!

Biker party
Get ready for the Chico Bicycle Music Festival (CBMF), which takes place from noon until dark on Saturday, June 2. Described at www.greentransition.org as “the perfect finale to Bike Month [May],” the CBMF is a free, all-ages event that takes place at three different Chico venues, and is powered by audience members running the performers’ amplified sound by pedaling bicycles set up to generate power.

Acoustic duo Tumbler—consisting of Dick and Jane’s Scott Itamura and Ellen Knight of The Railflowers—will kick off the day at noon in Camellia Way Park across the creek from Annie’s Glen, along with samba drum troupe Wolf Thump and singer-guitarist John Paul Gutierrez, “live on bike.”

At 2 p.m. head over (on your bike, of course) to Cedar Grove in Lower Bidwell Park to catch the captivating sister act, The Railflowers, as well as string-playing songstress Heather Normandale and local fave duo MaMuse.

Fall in with what’s sure to big a really big pack of people on bikes over to the GRUB Cooperative (1525 Dayton Road, 680-4543) to arrive by 6 p.m. for the evening’s festivities: Local clothing collective Chikoko’s Popcycle kids’ fashion show, guitarist Evin Wolverton, Envelope Peasant (“singster-songster” Sean Harrasser) and the Scientific Orchestra, psychedelic-pop outfit Gentlemen’s Coup, Perpetual Drifters (purveyors of what’s been termed “thinking-man’s pop”) and DJ Chedda the Shredda.

Head to www.chicobicyclemusicfestival.com for more info.

Cactus extravaganza
Everybody’s favorite cactus man, Claude Geffray (See “King of cactus, April 5, 2012), emailed me about his next Open Garden Sale at his huge cactus nursery at 742 Carpers Court, off of Alamo Avenue in north Chico. The popular, periodic event will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, June 1, and Saturday, June 2.

For those of you unfamiliar with Geffray (pictured) and his mindboggling number of assorted cacti and succulents (try somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000), his nursery is really worth checking out. Smart, sustainability-minded shoppers can scoop up amazing deals on all of Geffray’s intriguing plants during the two-day sale. And “window-shoppers” can just have a good time enjoying the beauty of the plants and the nursery grounds.

Call 345-2849 or go to www.creativecacti.com to learn more about Geffray’s nursery as well as his container creations and landscape-design services.

Good food quotes “The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can’t eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as ‘progress,’ doesn’t spread.”

– Andy Rooney

“When you go to the grocery store, you find that the cheapest calories are the ones that are going to make you the fattest—the added sugars and fats in processed foods.”

– Michael Pollan

Rest in peace, Ed
One of the greatest champions for bicycling that this town has ever had was Ed McLaughlin, an avid cyclist (an understatement) and great human being who passed away early May 24 (See a story in this week’s Newslines, page 8) after spending the last 4 1¼2 years confined to a wheelchair as a paraplegic, the result of a tragic biking accident. Ed’s fighting spirit will never die. He will be sorely missed.