Independence Day Alleycat
This report is late; the event in question happened on July 4. I refer, of course, to the K-VIBE (Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange) Independence Day Alleycat race.
An alleycat is essentially a glorified scavenger hunt on bicycles. Participants tear through traffic to track down a variety of goals. It’s associated with messenger and single-speed culture, but all kinds of people on all kinds of bikes showed up for this one. Given the participation of local messenger speed demons like Kendall and Rice, I knew I wouldn’t be in the running for the top places, but hey—a real live bike race! Count me in.
The K-VIBE crowd is a cool one, and I hope to see more of them in the future. Everybody there was friendly and welcoming; a significant change from the hipper-than-thou attitude that pervades a lot of cycling. In fact, partly because the people were so sickeningly positive and fun, I’m now considering building up a single-speed. But that’s a post for another time.
The alleycat checklist had 10 stops, all over metropolitan Honolulu. I groaned when I saw the stops way up on Waialae—all the way across town, and up a long, heavily-trafficked hill. This was starting to look suspiciously like work. I decided I’d hit a couple of the high-point-value stops that I figured wouldn’t be a high priority for the speed demons, and see how I felt after that.
The start was LeMans-style, everybody leaning their bikes up against the back wall of the parking lot, and walking back to the sidewalk. At the shout of “Go!” there was a sprint to the bikes, with point bonuses going to the first three riders out of the gate. Maddeningly, I was fourth. But hey, out of a field of 20 or so riders, that’s not bad.
The start was chaos. I almost felt sorry for the drivers—almost. The poor bastards would have seen a crowd of cyclists, dressed in everything from board shorts to full-on cycling gear and riding anything from full-suspension mountain bikes to fixed-gear track bikes to carbon fiber racers bust out onto the road, sprinting through the intersection (in flagrant violation of the red light) and dispersing throughout the neighborhood. My first thought: “These guys are fast.”
I headed out to Sand Island to grab one of the red rocks at the far end of the road. I didn’t imagine that anybody else would go there first, since it was so out of the way, and I was nearly right. About one-third of the way down the road, though, Rice caught me, and I thought I’d try to stick with her. I didn’t draft her, since that didn’t seem sporting, and ol’ Rice, despite being a tiny wisp of a thing, dropped me like a bad habit. I nearly cramped trying to stay with her. The girl can ride.
“The hell with this,” I finally thought, and grabbed one other item before heading back. Owing to my embarrasing lack of stamina, I wound up snaking the first-back points bonus, although that wasn’t nearly enough to place even in the top half.
The whole enterprise was seriously fun, though. The next one is the day before the Honolulu Century. I’ll be there—oh, I’ll be there, all right.
Before I forget, here are some pictures