January Greenlake Race

I like few things better than a midnight bike ride and race. There’s something absolutely delightful about carrying on your evening (read drinking and carousing with friends) until about 11:00PM, then excusing yourself to go ride crosstown eight or so miles where you get to meet up with a gang of like-minded (or at least similarly toasted) cyclists for a race around a public pond, especially when it’s clear and cold and ice patches on the course make for a particularly thrilling competition.

So it was with authentic delight that I showed up last night (along with my friend, Andrew) at the first midnight Greenlake Race of the year, on a sub-freezing evening where a waning gibbous moon hung in a frosty haze over the not-so-solemn proceedings. About fifteen relatively hardy souls (I say “relatively” because there was a fair degree of pissing and moaning about the temperature) were already there waiting for the flag to drop on this, the initial 2008 running of the monthly event.

If, of course, had no illusions about competing for the win, especially upon seeing that the magical Daniel Featherhead would be riding. His battered green Schwinn cruiser, a bike most of us would be lucky to merely complete the 2.9 mile oval on, would be (and was) plenty to carry him to victory—as, no surprise to anyone, it did.

My triumph was in hanging in sight of the lead group for longer than I ever have before—probably a third of the way. After that, I contented myself with the belief that, at least, I wasn’t in last place, a misapprehension of was disabused of upon finally DFL and winning a 1.5 liter-sized bottle of Jimi Hendrix “Electric” vodka!

Friend Andrew was showing signs of hypothermia (or at least acting like he was) so we didn’t stick around for the post-race festivities; I did, though, get another late-night crosstown ride home, warmed by a slug of Electric Jimi.