tricks n skids feb 15 @ Lennys, Atlanta

Friday night Graham and I fired up the fixed gears and headed out from his hut to the tricks and skids contest portion of SOPO bikes Broken Hearts and Bicycle Parts IV annual fundraising/bike cult initiation event. The event spans 3 days and consists of a race/scavenger hunt, the tricks n skids, some bands and a bike-in movie. I heard about the event last year but didn’t participate, and vowed to make sure I had at least some presence this year.

First off we had to get there. I hadn’t yet ridden my fixed gear in an actual urban environment (I predominately a mountain bike out here in Flowery Branch), and I have to say it was actually a little less sketchy than I thought. The hills weren’t too bad, and we were fortunate to have a route that actually had bike lanes for part of the way. There is a front brake on my bike for emergencies, because I am not able to stop w/o brakes anywhere near as fast as someone who is actually fit, but I only had to use them maybe once, and not very aggressively, for the whole trip to the venue.

One we were at Lennys, it was clear that the SOPO / Atlanta word of mouth promotional machinery had done its job. There were already about 50 bikes/riders on site, some chillin, drinking, others busting out spontaneous sessioning in the lot.

People continued to trickle into the lot. Then things started to get a little weird. There was a band that consisted entirely of brass instruments casually warming up in the lot among the bikers, including a tuba with dragon-like scales along the length and what appeared to be an extra head. It looked like a contraption from a Dr. Suess book. Then some guy dressed sort of like a hobo started running things with a megaphone, while the ensemble played tunes as a backing track for some fire performing babes.

The show continued and included some people laying on glass and having flaming cinder blocks broken via sledgehammer on their chest and various stunts of that nature. It was like some sort of contorted vaudeville act, and although at first it was received a little cooly, once the fire stuff started people kind of dug it.

Eventually the show sort of ended. You couldn’t really tell it had ended because every once in a while someone would randomly start up on one of the horns, but it was clear that the bike people were getting ansty. The parking lot sessioning had stepped up a notch and someone was actively running around with a clipboard signing people up for the contest. Organizationally, this event could have been made a little better with the addition of one component…powered bullhorn. The scene was chaotic. People were at the venue who had no idea there was a bike thing about to happen, and would walk out into the path of riders obliviously/drunkenly. The Lennys lot is also shared by a few other businesses that pulled in cars randomly throughout the night. The process of merging from the fire performer deal to the contest lasted almost an hour, but no one was complaining…bikey people with beer = good vibe.

The tricks contest started with the Ulock pickup. The idea here is to scoop up a Ulock of the ground without falling or dabbing your foot.

Several people pulled it off, so the lock was replaced with a pencil, which narrowed the field. After the pencil round, the obstacle was changed to a quarter, which I think two people managed to get. The cacaphony and chaos going on around the contest made it sort of hard to keep up with what the results were. Eventually there were two coins placed on the ground, which I didn’t see anyone get completely, but saw some good tries. Early on during this round there were some spills, which sort of broke he ice as far as people being ballsy and just trying stuff. The Ulock pickup portion ended by way of sort of turning back into a random session, which is how most of the events ended.

Next up was the skidding.

The parking lot wasn’t that long but it did curve around and have a nice downhill to the front of the shopping center, which the riders immediately put to good use.

The lack of a bullhorn to control the crowd really showed during this contest, and several runs had to be abandoned due to folks just meandering into the riders path. It was unclear who won, because the heavy hitters were going down the embankment and continued skidding well into the front parking lot. Of course there were a few bails as well. (Sorry the video quality is so dark, but I included them so you could get a feel for what the crowd was like)

The skids portion devolved into another random session leading up to the trackstand contest. It was about this point in the night that we ran into Josh Mitner(sp?), and old buddy from my djing days who was on hand with his Bianchi Fremont.

Great to catch up with him and a total suprise since we had no idea he rode! We chit chatted for a while, and then it was time for some trackstand action, or lack of action since trackstands are all about standing still.

This was the one contest I actually enterered. I did -okay-. You can see yours truly with my blue bike/yellow rims behind the orange aerospoke. You can also see the guy in the light blue shirt on the right in mid bail, which was a suprise since he was freakin raging all kinds of difficult tricks all night. At the point this photo was taken we had held the trackstands for about a minute, and the -official- had just called for us to go one handed. I held this for about half a minute, then finally dabbed and rode out.

Another half minute and the judge called for no-hands. Two riders made it through the no hands timed portion, so it came down to a sudden death no handed for the win. Graham took this excellent photo of the final two in full on zen-stand mode. The guy on the red bike was part of a crew that had been tearing it up all night, who were all running 26″ front wheels, so they had all the bar spin variations kinda dialed. The other rider is one of the No-Brakes Atlanta guys.

We had never seen a “Foot down” contest, so we didn’t really understand what was going on when folks started riding around in a fairly tight circle. It only took a few minutes to get the gist of the program though…you just ride in the circle and try not to have any foot dabs. You dab, you’re out. After about two minutes, riders started touching the ground. Folks started to get a little more aggressive, but never super pushy…just tactical. After every three or four riders would touch and exit the circle, the circle would tighten up, causing the riders to have to run tighter. There was one point where a rider began to high side, and never took his feet off the pedals, so folks standing on the outside of the circle who he fell into lifted him back upright and pushed him back in. A rebate! Within about 5 minutes it paired down to the final two, and by this time the crowd was very into it. The final fall was met with a nice round of applause and drunken cheers.

We tried to hang out to check out the best trick contest, but it had started to get cold and the event ran way longer than we thought. Although at first the looseness of the organization of the contest was not something I expected, by the end of the night it was clear that the thing being run somewhat casually was part of the events charm, and if it had been rigidly organized the vibe may have went down a notch or two. The atmosphere was sort of like what you find at a mountain bike endurance race, only with the amount of beer and socializing ramped up exponentially.

The ride home went well until we were about a mile rom Grahams hut, when he hit a pot hole and pinch flatted at a pretty dangerous clip of speed. Suckin. The next day my freakin thighs were FEELIN the effects of a lack of low gears. The ride to and from Lennys was 9 miles(approx).

Saturday I made it out to Gainesville College Trail for my standard two loop session, which I took very slowly, but felt way strong. The fixie is going to continue to be a great training tool for the off road ventures