Dead Baby Downhill XI
It’s the social event of the bike season and this year, I played it much better than last, when I got lost on the “longboard” alleycat race and didn’t make it to the after-party until way after it was already in swing.
This year, by contrast, I rode in the Downhill (to say “raced” would be an exaggeration) and arrived pretty much en masse with the perverted pelaton that swarmed down Delridge, across the lower span of the West Seattle bridge, and through SODO warehouse parking lots to Georgetown as dusk fell over our fair city.
Lots of very cool bikes, including a fleet of beautifully understated choppers made by a guy whose name I recall (perhaps incorrectly) as Jim Brooks, plenty of tall bikes and mini zoo-bombers, but the most impressive sights of all to me were a gal in a candy-striper dress and high heels totally rocking the route on an old Huffy-like cruiser and then, wildest of all, a guy with his two little kids, aged about 8 and 5, the older one on a Trail-a-Bike, the younger perched on the top tube of his dad’s ride, hands on the bars, feet propped forward and the fork crown, all three of them smiling wide even over the scary train tracks running at weird angles all along the final part of the race.
At the after race party this crew called Cyclecide had a pedal-powered two-person ferris wheel tilt-a-whirl thing that made everyone who tried it look thrilled and terrorized and there was also a bike with a gear on its headset so it steered completely backwards that I saw probably 50 people try and fail to complete even a single pedal revolution on; additionally a rousing bunny-hop competition and the inevitable tall-bike jousting.
I saw dozens of people I know from bike-riding and everyone was having a grand time even the few that weren’t as drunk and/or stoned as me.
This year, by contrast, I rode in the Downhill (to say “raced” would be an exaggeration) and arrived pretty much en masse with the perverted pelaton that swarmed down Delridge, across the lower span of the West Seattle bridge, and through SODO warehouse parking lots to Georgetown as dusk fell over our fair city.
Lots of very cool bikes, including a fleet of beautifully understated choppers made by a guy whose name I recall (perhaps incorrectly) as Jim Brooks, plenty of tall bikes and mini zoo-bombers, but the most impressive sights of all to me were a gal in a candy-striper dress and high heels totally rocking the route on an old Huffy-like cruiser and then, wildest of all, a guy with his two little kids, aged about 8 and 5, the older one on a Trail-a-Bike, the younger perched on the top tube of his dad’s ride, hands on the bars, feet propped forward and the fork crown, all three of them smiling wide even over the scary train tracks running at weird angles all along the final part of the race.
At the after race party this crew called Cyclecide had a pedal-powered two-person ferris wheel tilt-a-whirl thing that made everyone who tried it look thrilled and terrorized and there was also a bike with a gear on its headset so it steered completely backwards that I saw probably 50 people try and fail to complete even a single pedal revolution on; additionally a rousing bunny-hop competition and the inevitable tall-bike jousting.
I saw dozens of people I know from bike-riding and everyone was having a grand time even the few that weren’t as drunk and/or stoned as me.
posted by Professor Dave at 9:40 AM
1 Comments:
That sums it up pretty well. That backwards steering bike was just so tempting.. it looked like a bike but you could NOT ride that thing.. although I did see the guy running the ferris wheel with the bozo hair manage to ride it successfully.. I think he had practiced... he crossed his hands before attempting it. However that was not the "silver bullet" because when I tried riding cross handed, it still fell over.
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