Think Out Loud

‘Any Oregon Sunday’ documents the state’s diverse motorcycle communities

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
Oct. 20, 2021 5:34 p.m.

Broadcast: Wednesday, Oct. 20

"Any Oregon Sunday" is a documentary about motorcycle riders in the state.

"Any Oregon Sunday" is a documentary about motorcycle riders in the state.

Courtesy of "Any Oregon Sunday"

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“Any Oregon Sunday” is a 15-minute documentary that provides a snapshot of female motorcycle riders in Oregon. It explores Oregon’s outdoors and highlights the state’s natural splendor. Kanani Koster is the film’s director and Tiffany Lindquist is a producer for the film. “Any Oregon Sunday” will be screening on Thursday at The Clinton Street Theater in Portland. The film is also part of the Eastern Oregon Film Festival in La Grande and will be available to watch online.

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Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. 50 years ago, an action-packed documentary about motorcycle riding premiered. It was called On Any Sunday. This is how the trailer tried to lure folks to theaters: ‘Those of you who saw Bruce Brown’s film, The Endless Summer, will know why his new film, On Any Sunday, has received rave reviews from 105 major publications. Here’s one from Reader’s Digest: Bruce Brown has created a film about motorcycles and the men who ride them. To pack so much variety and visual excitement into every frame, that it leaves you breathless. When it comes your way, Don’t forget to go along for the ride.’ The movie took viewers around the world showcasing dirt bikes and road racing, hill climbing and trials. 50 years later, a team of Oregon filmmakers have made a kind of response, one focused specifically on Oregon and on women who ride. It’s called Any Oregon Sunday. It’s screening tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater, to be followed by the movie that inspired it. Kanani Koster directed Any Oregon Sunday. Tiffany Lindquist is one of the Producers. They both join me now. It’s good to have both of you on the show.

Kanani Koster / Tiffany Lindquist: Thanks for having us.

Dave Miller: Kanani Koster, you first. Do you remember when you first saw On Any Sunday?

Koster: I can’t remember the first time because it was something that I watched a lot growing up. It’s something that my dad... it’s my dad’s favorite film. I grew up riding dirt bikes with him. So we just would watch that movie all the time. And to be honest, it was not my favorite movie. It was very boring to me. But it definitely stuck with me because it was just something we watched all the time, and it was a bonding activity that I could do with my dad. So, I remember it a lot growing up, but I don’t remember the exact moment I first laid eyes on it.

Miller: So you weren’t crazy about the movie because it seemed like he watched it a lot and it was just a lot of motorcycle riding. Did you enjoy riding dirt bikes with your dad?

Koster: Yes and no. I liked the fact that it was time that I got to spend with him. he’s a very busy kind of guy. He focuses on anything with motors and engines. He’s a master tech and engineer, and he’s building cars or go-karts or motorcycles constantly. And you know, riding dirt bikes as a family with my younger sister, with my mom too, was the best way that I could be with him and try to find a way to relate with him. So in that way I enjoyed it.

Miller: What was the impetus behind Any Oregon Sunday?

Koster: Tiffany and I, and Janie, got together and we wrote in for a grant for the Oregon Outdoor Adventure Film grant, which is put on by Oregon Film and Travel Oregon. We decided on motorcycles. We reached out to Tiffany and brought her in because Tiffany is actively involved in the motorcycle community. When we were coming up with the idea for it, I knew it had to be different, and I wanted it to strike a chord with viewers in a way that was nostalgic but also felt new, or felt more relevant to the ‘now.’ That’s why I decided the best way to do that was to create an homage to On Any Sunday, but just really focusing on women in particular because there are so many women who ride motorcycles. I grew up riding, and my mom was riding motorcycles too. She still does. I just think that is often left out and there’s so many amazing riders out there who are women.

Miller: So Tiffany Linguist, why did you want to focus on women in motorcycling in Oregon in particular?

Tiffany Lindquist: Getting into motorcycling, I just found that it was a little bit intimidating. Most of the people that I knew who rode were men, and it took a little effort to meet women who rode. So I started getting involved with a lot of groups who are specifically women riders and encouraging women to ride, and setting up events and things like that, to introduce these women and just getting them comfortable riding in a typically male-dominated sport. So with the movie, there’s just so much desire to put it out there, to make you see women on screen in a situation where you wouldn’t normally see someone who looks like you or who you identified with.

Miller: You’re listed on the credits as a producer and rider, not somebody who wrote this but somebody who was riding. What does it mean to be a rider as part of the credits for a movie?

Lindquist: There’re several riders listed. I’m the rider who’s traveling from location to location, meeting up with our other featured riders. Then in our last location, which is on a motor sport track, motocross track, I ride on the track with our rider, Ashley [Volner]. So yeah, it was a unique credit to have. But we’ve got three riders. You’ve got Kylee Sweeten who does trials. We’ve got Jada Noriyuki who does trails. And then Ashley Volner who does the MX track racing. So, I just rode along with all of them.

Miller: Let’s listen to Jada Noriyuki, who you mentioned there, who rides on Trails. Here, she is from the movie talking about what makes Oregon special.

Jada Noryuki: Both street and dirt offer the opportunity to connect to nature and we live in the most perfect place to enjoy all of that. You can get twisty roads to the mountains, to the desert, to the ocean. It’s a perfect place to enjoy motorcycles.

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Miller: Tiffany Lindquist, what was the shooting of the movie like? It seems like you basically just got to go to a bunch of pretty places and do something you love. Is that a fair way to put it?

Lindquist: Yeah, and even just scouting to figure out where we were going to be shooting, it was like, ‘oh, go ride my motorcycle and all these remote, amazing locations in Oregon? Sure we can do that.’ And I had never ridden on a track before, so showing up that day and just having a totally new experience was awesome. It’s like a ‘doing what you love for work’ kind of thing. It’s like you’re trying to convince me to do this thing that I love. Yeah, I guess I can be persuaded.

Miller: Kanani Koster, Tiffany mentioned that you really focus on three different women in the movie, all of whom take part in pretty different worlds of motorcycling. Can you introduce us to Kylee Sweeten?

Koster: Yeah, Kylee Sweeten is a champion trials rider. She’s amazing and fantastic. Trials riding is basically the goal of riding up boulders and hills and logs without taking your feet off the pegs. It’s not a race. It’s based on just how well you can do that. And that’s something my dad did when I was growing up. Obviously something I never got into, because I was never that good. I just would ride my little PW80 around.

Miller: But can you describe what it looks like? I mean, you say it’s not a race. It seems really hard. I mean, it seems like a kind of dance on two wheels, where you have to have unbelievable skill and balance with front wheelies and rear wheelies. I mean, what are riders actually doing?

Koster: It’s amazing. I think if you haven’t, you really just need to see trials riding, because when I say boulder, I mean actual boulders that are like taller than me. And she’s riding up the side of it. She’s not riding over it, and she’s not just jumping onto it. But she can do that. It’s insane. It’s so hard to describe. Tiffany, you might do a better job than I do, but you know, she’ll just come up onto it and pop her wheel up, and ride up on top of it, and then go over logs. It is much slower, and that was also fun when I was editing, and finding the right music to go with that. Because so often when you think of motorcycles, you think of something that’s fast. You think of street racing, you think of MX racing. But this is not like them at all. It’s so careful. She’ll be teetering on a log and just the engine is going, and she’s going left and right and balancing for a minute as she’s thinking about where she should even go, because there’s all these rocks in front of her, and tree stumps and logs, and she’s trying to figure out how she can get through that course.

Miller: Tiffany, what does it take to be good at this particular version of motorcycle riding?

Lindquist: I don’t know how much I can say about that because I’m not good at it.

[Overlapping laughter]

Lindquist: But, it’s just control. It’s foresight. I think it’s like you’re just constantly riding the clutch and the gas. And its balance. You can’t take your feet off the pegs. You are just barely gassing, you’re pulling in the clutch. You’re having so much control and foresight to know where you’re going to. You know what tiny log you’re going to balance on next, and seeing where you’re going.

Miller: Kanani, I wonder if you could introduce us to Ashley Volner, who is another one of the women that you profile?

Koster: She is an MX racer and during the production of the film... It was last summer, and as we all remember, it was a very difficult summer for COVID, but also the wildfires. So we were specifically looking for a rider who would go out to the dunes on paddle tires and that’s what we wanted to feature mostly because yes, we were biased and wanted to go hang out at the beach and the dunes for a weekend. I will admit to that. Basically, the state parks got shut down because of the fires. We couldn’t get permits to go out there. But we had found Ashley through Instagram, and we had seen all these amazing photos of her just ripping it on the dunes. We were talking to her already and she also told us that she did MX racing and we were able to work with AlbanyMX motopark. They were really awesome and very open to us filming there. and kind of just let us have free rein on their park on a Friday-Saturday (can’t remember what day it was). She goes out. She is very new to racing, which is amazing too. She’s only been doing it for two years, I think. Basically she had started out on quads, mostly doing it at the dunes. But eventually decided that she wanted to ride dirt bikes. So she went in and bought a motorcycle.

Miller: We actually have a clip from the movie where she talks about this. So let’s listen to it and you can help us understand what this means. This is Ashley Volner talking about buying a motorcycle.

Volner: I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it. I just decided this is what I’m gonna do. I was always a fan of Hondas. It’s what I rode when I rode quads. I walked into the dealership with cash in hand and I just went in and bought a brand new CRF-250. And they tried to talk me out of it. They’re like, ‘have you ever ridden a bike before?’ And I was like, ‘no.’ ‘Have you raced?’ ‘No.’ And they’re like, ‘well, maybe the 150 would be a better fit for you.’ And I was convinced that that wasn’t the bike for me, that I wanted to learn to ride this bike because I knew I was gonna go out on the dunes and I just told myself I was going to do it.

Miller: So, maybe you guys can help me understand this, as somebody who does not ride motorcycles and doesn’t really know what a CRF-250 is. How big a deal is it to buy that as your first motorcycle?

Volner: Tiffany, you should handle this one…[Laughter]

Lindquist: To take that out on the race track and having never ridden a dirt bike on the dirt before, that’s a pretty big deal. She’s not a big person. She’s pretty small. I would say that most people would recommend starting with a 150. The two is a lot of power. It’s ultimately that she would have grown out of the 150 really quickly. But I love that she just went for it and sort of just knew. She had enough knowledge having ridden in the dunes and stuff on other motorized vehicles that she would have grown out of that pretty quickly. But it’s pretty awesome.

Miller: Tiffany, I’m just curious. You talked about the challenge, at first, of seeing yourself in motorcycling. But what kind of community have you found as you’ve gone forward?

Lindquist: It’s been awesome. The motorcycle scene in Oregon is amazing. I mean, there’s cliques. But ultimately there’s so much overlap. It’s one of the most nonjudgmental places I’ve ever landed after. Looking at it from the outside, it felt really intimidating. It’s a huge community. People are always fundraising for each other and helping each other out, and it’s been super heartwarming.

Miller: Tiffany Lindquist and Kanani Koster. Thanks for joining us.

Lindquist / Koster: Thank you. Thank you.

Miller: Tiffany Lindquist is a motorcycle rider and the producer of Any Oregon Sunday. Kanani Koster is the director of the film. You can see it tomorrow evening at 6:30 at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater.

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