Bicycle Fetish Day

Yesterday was Bicycle Fetish Day! It started off with a block party in Williamsburg with music, food and bikes. There were some contests there for things like: prettiest bike, ugliest bike, most philosophical bike, etc. Someone had brought a mini ramp and there were some people doing jumps off the ramp, including a guy riding an impossible wheel (basically a wheel with pegs attached to the axle). There was also a race.

My friend Victor had organized an Alleycat race. An Alleycat is basically a street race through the city with very few rules. Typically you're given a "manifest" with a list of checkpoints and you have to go to each checkpoint in any order to complete the race. The course for this particular race was pretty short so I decided to do it. In particular the checkpoints were (listed in the order I completed them):

Essex and Houston St.
68th St. and 1st Ave.
38th St. between 8th and 9th Ave.
33 W 17th St.
Centre and Worth
Kenmare and Lafayette

And then back to the Bicycle Fetish Day. Here is a map of the course. We took the car path on the Williamsburg bridge and the Central Park 65th St. Transverse in order to save time. After the 38th St. checkpoint most of the people I was riding with headed down 7th Ave. whereas I took Broadway. I arrived at the 17th St. checkpoint about 20 seconds before they did so we regrouped to head downtown into the financial district. Once we were back on the Williamsburg bridge a couple of the guys started sprinting. I joined them but took it a little bit easier. Eventually we all got stuck behind a truck and a double-parked car on Havemayer and had to get off our bikes, lift them over some parked cars and ride on the sidewalk to get around. In the end I came in fifth place and won a Syncros hat, a t-shirt and a Crumpler pouch.

A little while after the Alleycat some track bike events were held. These included trackstands, footdown, freestyle and skids. The trackstand competition involved trackstanding normally for a certain amount of time. Once that time was up, you had to remove one hand from your handlebars. After another set amount of time, both hands had to come off. Eventually it came down to having only one foot on the bike. Almost everyone fell at that point with only a few people (myself included) able to stay up with only one foot. However I was the only person who was able to stay up for more than 5-10 seconds after we started the one-footed trackstands and I won $13 (it was $1 to enter, winner takes all).

After trackstands was footdown. This entails riding around in circles while trying to knock other people off their bikes. If you put your foot down you lose. I'm not terribly interested in footdown so I didn't participate.

Next up was the freestyle competition. Most of the people who competed were doing trick skids (leg over the bars, no hands, foot through the frame, etc.). I did some trackstand tricks - foot-through-the-frame trackstand, then did some bunny hops in that position, did a no-handed foot-through-the-frame trackstand and then attempted to bunny hop and failed. Dan G. ended up winning by doing some trick skids while curtseying with his hat.

The last track competition was the distance skid. Basically you sprint until you reach a certain point, and then you lock up your rear wheel and put as much of your weight forward as possible by leaning over your handlebars. This causes your rear wheel to skid, and whoever goes the furthest wins. I was the second person to skid and right when I started my skid I started to fishtail. I over corrected and ended up going down pretty hard. Apparently I hit my head, bounced/flipped over landing on my back then rolled around. I immediately popped back up on my feet and was pretty much okay. A little bruised and I had a couple of scraps (and I need a new helmet) but nothing serious.

The day ended with a party in the backyard of the City Reliquary.