Montreal’s The Rise

Ride hard, party hard

If the guys from The Rise showed up to your party, you’d be relieved in a way. The riders affiliated with the Montreal-based crew like their rock ’n’ roll, especially the heavy riffs of Blue Cheese, a band from their area. Their stokeness would ensure your party would go off. But you’d also be a bit nervous. They bring a sense of danger, which is appropriate considering the type of riding they do. In sessions, which range from street to park to dirt, the freeriders launch into tailwhips, 360s, tuck no-handers, backflips and barspins.

In late winter and early spring, The Rise released a 14-episode video series chronicling its most recent Partymaster Tour. In the summer of 2018, the riders packed into a bus and travelled across Ontario and Quebec. Wherever they stopped, they rode – sometimes in bike parks, sometimes around schools and, once, right into a lake. They also rocked out. The bus

pulled a trailer full of gear for putting on shows.

A rock show can seem like simple wild abandon put on a stage. Of course, there’s a lot of planning and preparation that goes into such an event. The same is true for the Partymaster Tour. There are also strategies for surviving and thriving on a 16-day freestyle rock ‘n’ roll odyssey.

Planning to ride and party

“From the outside, it looks simple: you jump on a bus and you leave,” says Michel Plonka, co-founder and ceo of The Rise. “But at first, we had no idea how to get a bus, the regulations, what driver’s licence you need or how to organize the shows.” Plonka, along with Louis Lhomel and Stéphane Bélanger, planned the first Partymaster Tour in 2017. They learned a lot about logistics, but also pacing. “It was super fun, but almost too exhausting to repeat,” Plonka says. “So, in 2018, we wanted to go longer. If you do 16 days, you have three weekends. We focused the events on the weekends. During the week, we had more time to ourselves to go riding. It was more chill. “It looks very freestyle. It is freestyle. But it’s organized pretty well.”

Preparing for the bike sessions

While the planning for a tour can take hours and days, gaining the skills to ride freestyle takes much, much longer. It isn’t like training for a race or a gran fondo. “It’s different from road cycling and other more competitive biking sports,” Plonka says. “With freestyle, you start to do it when you are young because you like jumping your bike. You don’t count the hours. But to get to this level, all the guys have been riding for more than five years. I’ve been riding for 15 years now. Biking has always been part of our lives. It’s a lot of practice. I can’t tell you in hours. It’s years.”

Party pacing

There may be some significant differences between riders who focus on ftp and the freestyle set, but the

Partymaster Tour seems to turn things into an endurance event. As Bélanger says of the first tour, “It was like show, party, show, party, show, party. It was crazy. It was good, but you couldn’t do more than 10 days.”

Not only did Plonka and company adjust the 2018 tour to be less gruelling, but the riders also know the deal. They are there to ride. They pace themselves accordingly. “There is partying going on,” Plonka says. “Some people might think everybody gets drunk all the time, but that’s not what it is. Of course, we love music, so we’ll go to a show and have a beer. But the guys are aware that their priority is to ride and they want to ride. They know how to behave.”

Managing artists and equipment

“We all know that members of rock bands aren’t the most punctual people,” Plonka says. “I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but it’s true. It’s just the way they are. We used to be not so punctual, but now I think we’re pretty professional in what we do. People like the freestyle vibe that we bring, but they know they can rely on us. It’s the best of both worlds.” He wrangled seven bands to play the Brose Farm stop, the biggest show of the 2018 tour.

The Rise bus hauled a trailer with all the gear for putting on the live shows. It was heavy and likely the reason that wheel studs started breaking early during the trip. The tour had to pause while Plonka and the driver made repairs. The Rise ceo figures the team will carry less gear in 2019 and rent necessary sound equipment close to each venue.

Take a yoga break

OK. So yoga isn’t very rock ‘n’ roll, unless Brian Jones picked it up as he was learning the sitar. Following an intense session at Toronto’s Joyride 150, riders were treated to some yoga. “Everybody joined in,” Plonka says. “Everyone felt better. When we went riding, it definitely showed.”

“It was like show, party, show, party, show, party. It was crazy. It was good, but you couldn’t do more than 10 days. ”