CarnalNation

On Day 4 of AIDS/LifeCycle, Midori reports from the halfway point between San Francisco and Los Angeles and talks with "The Brownie Lady," an unofficial supporter of the ride who made at least 2,000 brownies and cookies to hand out to the cyclists and roadies this year.  [Read more]

This year, Midori is allowing CarnalNation to publish her audio reports about the 2010 AIDS/LifeCycle, which she records on her cell phone. On the morning of day 3, Midori reports on the previous day, which took the riders 107.5 miles. The broadcast cuts off at the end, so listen to the second part for her thoughts on butt butter and fundraising in small towns.  [Read more]

If you know one thing about author and sex educator Midori, you probably know about her passion for rope bondage. Her 2001 book The Seductive Art of Japanese Rope Bondage is one that every aspiring rope geek keeps on their bookshelf, and her weekend-long Rope Dojos routinely sell out within days every time she puts tickets on sale. Despite the fact that she regularly lectures and writes on everything from blowjobs to sexual health to the peculiarities of Japanese love hotels, for many she remains synonymous with learning new and interesting ways to tie up your beloved.

One thing you may not know about Midori unless you've been paying very close attention: every year, she drives around the Central Valley of California for ten days wearing fluffy white bunny ears. No, it's not a fetish thing. If Midori had a furry fetish, she'd probably already have written a best-selling book and taken to the road with a series of workshops about how to free your inner furvert. The ears are part of Midori's garb as a roadie on the AIDS/LifeCycle event, a 7-day bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

This is either Midori's sixth or seventh year (as she says, "it all blurs together,") working as part of the "sweep team" of 15 vans that Midori describes as the "sheep dogs" of the event.  "We circle around in little leapfrogging loops, following—some say stalking—the cyclists, to make sure that they're safe, that they're obeying traffic laws, and if they need any  assistance, anything [like] inflating a flat tire…. we can't repair them, but we can do minor things." The vans are there for any number of small tasks, from providing band-aids and fresh water to transporting cyclists whose bikes need serious attention to the next rest stop, where trained mechanics do the repairs.

All of this, of course, begs the important question: what's up with those damn bunny ears? "AIDS/LifeCycle," Midori says, "is kind of like Burning Man on wheels, with a cause, as organized by drag queens… with military campaign precision." In other words, there just has to be some fabulousness and absurdity attached to the whole thing, come hell or high water. "We love to have personality," she notes, "Because otherwise it'd just be 15 white vans and you wouldn't know." For Team Ursa, that manifests in the form of fluffy bunny ears.  [Read more]