After a falafel at Falafel King on 1st and a memorial ride in memory of Terry Tuck, a courier killed in the act of messengering I headed east to The Swan in Inglewood with James and a small army of fixed geared street racers to the start of my first messenger style Alley Cat race.
An Alley Cat race is a bike race that closely resembles a scavenger hunt. Such as race is popular among messengers after hours and thus often takes place at night. Thursdays event started at 7 pm, long past the suns bedtime. It must have been quite a sight to see about a dozen riders with only blinky lights for direction tearing out of the parking lot and down 9th ave towards the downtown core in search of the first pickup. Like Keech told me before the start there is something incredibly exciting about ripping around downtown in the dark with a purpose...
In the spirit of messengers everywhere we had to pick up delivery slips from DHL and Purolator bags at various locations in the downtown and beltline areas, plus get information from about 10 different memorials in the same area and collect some candy and other random stuff. In my travels that evening I went to locations in backalleys and storefronts all over the downtown core, up centre street to Calgary Cycle, out west to the Greyhound bus depot, along the bikepath to Edmonton Trail, up to the top of Scotsman Hill and finally to the final pickup east of Deerfoot in Forest Lawn. The race took me 3 hours to complete on my single speed (not fixed though) Barracuda rigid mtb with slick Kenda "Flame" tires. This turned out not to be the bike of choice as the majority of my competition were aboard road and track type machines. I finished second in the "poser" category, second last overall a good 45 minutes at least to Bicisport teammate Jesse Collins who took the win overall. Jesse is a professional courier if that means anything....
I was surprised by the number of participants in this race who were actually riding fixed bikes with no brakes. For those of you who aren't clear on this concept it is best described as a bike with no ability to coast, in otherwords when the rear wheel is turning your pedals are turning with it, there is a direct drive type connection between the cranks turning and the wheel turning. Think of it as being like riding a tricycle were to slow down you have to apply opposing force to the pedals. I wasn't there to witness it as I was far behind the leaders, but Jesse was right in there the entire night and told me of the crazy antics some of these fixed gear boys displayed. Coming down centre street towards downtown they were putting their feet on their seatstays and letting the bike go hitting speeds of upwards of 70km/hr and then putting their feet back on the pedals and fighting the spin to slow down. These guys corner and stop by pushing back on the pedals so hard they break out into a skid. It is also not uncommon for them to hitch a ride on vehicles, busses and pickups being the favourites, for longer straight sections like the rush to Greyhound.
It was a great event. Although I struggled to find the downtown addresses due to my very limited street knowledge I had a great time. Thanks to Brian Kullman and James Purdey for putting on such a great event.
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