The Blasphemists are playing Teatro on Thursday, Aug. 25, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5.

The Blasphemists interbreed rock, gutter punk and trashcan blues to form a bombastic, if not occasionally unsettling, musical experience that will make you bob your head and gasp for air. They consist of Adam Sundberg, multi-instrumentalist Joshua Herbert and percussionist Steve Hamlin. Their live shows include smashing glass, clanging trashcans and the occasional John Cage piece.

We’ll be watching Bicycle Dreams, an award winning documentary on the Race Across America. The RAAM is one of the most difficult ultra endurance events in the country, requiring cyclists to traverse 3,000 miles over 10 days. The documentary details what it takes to compete in this event and the level of insanity that most of the racers exhibit to even entertain the notion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alEHvr-zKm0

Tickets are $7.50. It’s highly recommended you get yours early to reserve a seat.

Proceeds go to COGGS, the organization that has built and maintains multi-use singletrack trails at Mont du Lac, Spirit Moutain, Piedmont, Hartley and Lester-Amity.

Here’s the trailer for it. Don’t be discouraged that there is no apparent biking in the trailer. The story is of a boy who trains and then rides in the Tour de France, until something goes awry when he’s picked up in the Broom Wagon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVTEKfxHS1E

Here’s a little review of Vive le Tour: Louis Malle’s 19-minute take on the Tour de France is a masterpiece. Rapid cutting puts you into the Tour in ways that modern coverage have not matched, partly I think because we know better than to let crazy people near the riders. With narration that is made up of commentary of the riders and the event we see the joys of winning, the agony of losing and just whats its like to ride. Since the film is not about a race or a stage of the race, rather about what its like to race we have time to see what it must be like to ride. We see the riders up close and see the pain on their faces. We see crashes, drink raids (stopping at roadside bar and stealing drinks), the crowd whizzing by and the people who help the riders. It’s a whirlwind 19 minutes and I was ready to start the film all over again once I finished it.

So come hang out, make some friends, buy a bucket of Grain Belt and enjoy a couple great movies while supporting COGGS!

In the past six months there have been some incredible things happening with COGGS that I wanted to take a moment to share with the rest of the Twin Ports community.

The absolute biggest thing is that a proposed multi-use, single-track trail has been accepted by the city of Duluth’s Master Plan (Huge thank you to Andrea Grygo for creating this!). The city is behind COGGS mission of developing a cross-city multi-use, single-track trail and making Duluth a destination mountain biking town.

Hansi Johnson, IMBA’s Midwest director, knows of no other city in the entire country that has the potential to have a trail of this scope within the city limits. This big picture dream has all the right components coming together for us to make it a reality.

More immediately, COGGS has verbal approval to begin designing specific projects for Mission Creek and the Spirit Mountain Nordic system. That, along with our current projects of Lester Park and Brewer Park, provide instant opportunity to continue helping establish the kind of trail system that local riders want and will draw riders from other areas.

It may seem like COGGS is doing great and better riding opportunities keep popping up all over the place. To a degree this is true, there are more riding opportunities, for a wider ranger of cyclists, than there were five years ago. However, currently we are severely limited by the amount of volunteer work we have to work with. The projects in Mission Creek, Spirit Mountain and Brewer park have all had an open door for moving forward for 1-3 years already, but because with our current level of help we can only really focus on one or two projects at a time, they sit dormant.

The COGGS Board is working on ways to try and remedy this issue by looking at fundraising and grant opportunities. We also have the Yes! Duluth program providing workers that are being coordinated by a COGGS paid supervisor. This crew is currently working in Lester Park, and volunteers can also join them in their efforts.

Things like the Yes! Duluth program are helping, but we need additional help to make the dreams we all have of Duluth being the best place to live and ride bikes it can possibly be.

So how can you help? Here are a few options:

1. Come out and volunteer at trail work days. If you’re a COGGS member you will get regular email updates letting you know when and where we’ll be working. We regularly work, or have the access to work throughout Duluth, so no matter where you live we can be working on a trail nearby. Our website, www.coggs.com, has a membership form and also links to trailwork updates.

2. Donate to COGGS. Because we are a 501-C3, your contribution is tax deductible. Many members have been utilizing this, most notably the saint who matched the funds we collected from our spring membership drive.

3. Help with grant writing and seeking grant opportunities. Other towns of similar size have significantly bigger trailbuilding budgets and their local clubs just do planning while they hire the construction to be done. Rapid City, SD has had over a million dollars of money flow through they local cycling clubs. Specks on the map like Copper Harbor, MI have budgets over ten times ours. By winning grants we can pay for our trails to be done by professionals.

4. Participate in COGGS events. We have workdays, we put on races, we go on trips, we have parties. All of this builds community and this makes the work fun.

Again, right now each and every one of us has the opportunity to help the Twin Ports take a huge jump forward as far as being an epic place to ride if we all just do a little bit. I look forward to working with each of you to help this vision become a reality.

Adam Sundberg
COGGS Chair

Lincoln Park Mountain Bike Challenge & Festival features:

Children, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes
150-250 participants and 500-1,000 spectators are expected
Cash prizes for top placement in each class
First Advanced biker to reach trail-entry is the “King of the Hill” and wins $50
Paved and off-road sections of race for all levels of competition
Kids Bounce House
Awards ceremony on grandstand stage
“Party in the Park” with live-music performances
Grand Raffle Prize Drawing
Event Raffle Prize Drawings
Food Vendors and Retail Vendors
Beer Garden

The presenting sponsors this year are Midwest Communications (The Bridge & Classic Rock) and the Lincoln Park Business Group. Supporting sponsors include: Continental Ski, Lamar, Northland’s Newscenter, Sound Central, and Nordic Waste.

With great cash prizes to be won, we expect around 150 to 250 participants. There will be four classes: Children, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. The top placement in each category will all cash prizes. The top three placements in each class will receive trophies. There will also be a $50 “King of the Hill” prize for the first mountain biker to reach the trail-entry at the top.

The Advanced class race will begin at 1:00 p.m. with a mass start at the bottom of the hill near the Lincoln Park Pavilion. The Intermediate class will have a mass start at 11:00 a.m. in the same location. The Children and Beginner classes will be shuttled to the trail-entry at the top of the hill and will begin their race at 9:00 a.m.

The Elephant Rock Trials Competition will take place all day and features a course with both urban and nature sections. Spectators will get a close look at the the skill and coordination these athletes have while doing freestyle tricks over obstacles without touching the ground.

All participants will be automatically entered into the Event Raffle, but they must be present to win. The awards ceremony begins at approximately 3:30 p.m., or once the final participants have crossed the finish line.

The “Party in the Park” will follow and feature several live-music acts. Opening is Jamie Ness and Brad Nelson, the second performance will be the Uprising, and the headliner is Two Many Banjos. Peter Kavula, an interactive musical performer, will perform throughout the day and interact with the kids. Nick Felbum will perform his acoustic music in the morning.

Our Grand Raffle Prize is $1,000 cash with second place winning a brand new mountain bike valued at $650. Purchase raffle tickets for only $5 each!

Ten percent of the proceeds will be donated to the Cyclists of the Gitchee Gumee Shores (COGGS). They manage the trail in Piedmont and will help with the event by signing the trail for the different classes. They will also be responsible for tracking participants’ times in each class.

For more information or to register, please call Heath Hickok, LPBG’s executive director, at 218-727-6573. Also, register online at www.LPBG.org.