La Furia de la Calla Race

Last night, I took part in a combination alleycat race/scavenger hunt called “La Furia de la Calla” which I guess roughly translates to “road rage,” although the organizers of the race and the contestants I met and talked with couldn’t have been sweeter, themselves.

The event was a benefit for a bike shop in Mexico City and was sponsored by, among others R.E. Load Bags and Revolution Cycles and attracted a bunch of serious cyclists—a number of messengers and a pretty fair contingent of fixie kids, all way faster and more intent upon competing than me.

So my strategy was to just pick one of the stops, ride to it, and hang out drinking beer with the folks who were stationed there. This worked pretty well and allowed me to really feel like I was part of the event without having to wear myself out tearing all over the city.

The race had a post-apocalyptic theme; the manifest required riders to complete six challenges in the cause of ensuring people’s survival in the wasteland of industrial demise where “the waters of the Puget Sound are nothing but a mire of toxic sludge.”

At the stop I visited, by the “Wall of Death” underneath the University Bridge, riders had to pick up empty plastic bottles and return them filled with fresh water, a precious and rare commodity in the post-apocalyptic environment. I got a real kick out of how seriously racers took the task; I think it’s the mark of an excellent alleycat when participants get fully into the spirit of the thing like this.

When it seemed like most of the riders were through, I headed directly to the end of the race, in Georgetown, behind the Rainier Cold Storage building. There, I got to mingle with the finishers, listen to live music on several different stages, and enjoy another long and lovely early summer evening in our fair city, which—in its pre-apocalyptic state—was looking just fine.