The alleycat was insane!!
I will tell the story of the whole day since it was all pretty good.
Unlike most days I actually had a bunch of shit planned. I was up at 8 AM and went out garage sale-ing in the hopes of finding more sweet bikes, no luck unfortunately. That was all fine and fun but pretty uneventful, I just like doing the saturday morning garage sale circuit.
Right after that I caught a train into Toronto to meet up with Alex Venis (snowblindsloth) for some hackysack. We played in Dundas Square which was veeery high traffic, but not impossible. I don't think I had any highlights other than hitting scop bsos again.
After shred we went and got some food together. Man, that kid is fuckin saucy. Our humors feed off eachother and it just winds up getting really absurd super fast. Good kid. His shred is way improved too, go alex!
After shred with alex I biked over to the corner of Queen and Spadina to meet up with Vida Shredita, who keen blog readers will remember from my past. We had a great time hanging out, we hadn't hung out in like.. over a year at least and we were overdue.
At one point we were walking along and decided to turn into some park that looked inviting. A few minutes earlier I had been describing slack line and how it works..... then all the sudden we came upon 3 slack lines set up!!! Totally by fluke I got to meet the Toronto slack line community and they were super nice! I even tried out their lines and had mild success. If anything would reinforce my desire to get into slack line this is it!
We got hungry and got a bite to eat. 'A beer' turned into a pitcher and then that pitcher turned into two, perfect preparation for a balls to the wall street race.
Eventually it came time to head to the place where the race would be starting. I got to the bar but didn't see anyone or anything that made sense. I decided to circle the bar to make sure, when I got to the back I was treated to a delightful sight, SHIT TONS of fucking track bikes!!! They were all so fucking slick and decked out, I was wicked jealous.
It turns out that all the people in that community are also awesome! Many of them were crazy stylish and tattooed and tough and stuff but they still welcomed me. I was sure glad I wore my awesomest tight pants!
They were all real supportive and encouraged me to participate in the race. I was sorta nervous because the premise of the race was to rip around to all these bars I'd never heard of on streets I wasn't familiar with. I decided that the only way I would finish the race was if I picked someone and just stuck to them like glue. Right before the race started I grabbed one of the loaner helmets, better safe than sorry.
The race started with everyones bikes laying down together with us off to the side, he yelled start and we all bolted for our bikes. Right away I lost the dude I was going to be following and had to scramble to figure out what to do. I didn't have ANY idea where I was going, I just picked this one set of blinky lights in front of me and stayed locked on. The dude I picked to follow was brutal fast!!! He went faster than I EVER go, but he held that pace the whole race!! We ripped from stop to stop getting the various signatures and silly shit that was required at each stop.
I still can't believe how aggressive we were riding! Like, faster than the cars in most cases and that speed basically right up to a light at which point you kill off some speed by skip stopping and then skidding enough to check if there is a hole for you to dart through, no matter what colour the light was!
And like.. I really had no choice. It was either ride as insane as the other dude or I was lost with no direction in a giant unknown city. At one pit stop I was a little slow getting out my sheet that they sign and I fell back half a kilometer from my dude and had to scramble and blow through reds to catch up.
Anyways, the race took us about 45 minutes and I managed to make it back death free.
By completing the race I got a spoke card to put in my wheels. Spoke cards are wicked stylish and are supposed to signify that you've participated in an alleycat.
Basically all the bikes were fixed gears, it was SO amazing to see so many in one place! After the race there were a few hours of goofing off on our fun bikes and just hanging out.
Fixed gears allow you to do some stuff you can't do on normal bikes, those things turn into contests at alleycats. They also held a trackstand contest that I took 5th in. The contest was to trackstand for a minute, then take one hand off, then after another minute take the other hand off, after a minute remove a foot etc. I fell shortly after the no-hand point because I was off balance going into it.
After trackstands came the skid competition. It was pretty informal, we just ripped through a parking lot, took a hard right, then commit to your skid! (you skid a fixed gear by locking you legs, this involves NO brakes)
I got second in the skid comp! yay!
Everyone really liked the silly tricks I could do also. I've got a whole bunch of silly tricks involving fixies and juggling that nobody else in the world is doing yet. Fuck, I am so cool!
Eventually all the fun ended and we all went our own ways. I biked east down Queen street with one of the friends I had made. It was cool biking in the city after I had gone through that insane race, it made normal biking seem so casual!
A short ride later I got to Vida's place and passed out, what a long day!