The first film of the “bike” trilogy.  I’m a jazz fan and in Minneapolis at this time, Happy Apple was a group I listened to often.  I always responded visually to the playing of the drummer Dave King and thought that I should animate to his drums in a film.  At this same time, I was teaching in an arts high school called The Perpich Center for Arts Education.  One of my students, James Peterson, came back from summer vacation and told me the story you hear in the film.  Having gone through a divorce recently, I thought “there's a story that everyone can relate to.”  I recorded James telling his story, edited it down to six and a half minutes and gave it to Dave King to prepare a structured improvisation.  Dave came in to the studio to record and played once through while listening to James’ story in headphones.  We listened back to what Dave had done and I said, “that’s great, let’s do another one, so I’ll have a couple to choose from.”  Dave responded, “you’re the director, we can do that if you want, but I was thinking about this:  do you know of those Japanese monks who sit in front of a blank canvas meditating and drinking rice wine for 6 hours and then in one gesture throw ink onto the canvas and that’s it . . . well, I think that’s how we should do it . . . I think I got it in my first take.”  So we went with Dave’s philosophy of spontaneity and recorded only that one take.  (You hear him at the beginning of the film saying “this is the one.”)

   In that spirit, I analyzed the two tracks, voice and drums, at 24 frames per second and drew straight ahead with no planning and no storyboard.  I decided that I wouldn’t even test or revise the animation, though in truth some things were slightly adjusted in the inking pass.  What you end up with is an organic conversation between James (the story), Dave (the drums) and me (the animation).

   “Bike Ride . . . is pretty wonderful.  Using Thurber-like pen and ink, Schroeder illustrates the real-life audio testimony of a lovesick fool who rode his bike for five hours to visit a woman he thought loved him back.  Drawn in thick, sensuously rounded white lines set against a black background, this is the most inventive seven minutes of film in many a moon.”

                               Chuck Wilson, LA Weekly