Agro in the streets of Boston

Event: Legend of Zelda Replay Race Type: Alleycat bike race Date: 7/15/06 Team reporting: E, J, C, C, and Me Location: Boston and Cambridge Number of times crossing the bridge by Science park: 6 Race Report: Imagine all the nastiness of criterium bike racing: the breakaways, the nasty corners, the aggressive, relentless pace. Now imagine doing it in the streets of Boston on a Saturday afternoon. Add urban orienteering, and that should give you a taste of what this race was. It all started the night before when C, C, and I, promised both a). cheap beer and b). info about the race showed up at a downtown bike shop for a "bike porn" show. No, gentle reader, no mechanical sexual deviance actually took place, just a lot of tatooed, grungy, bike messenger guys showing of their pimped out fixed gear bikes. We voted on our favorites, got the race info (a cryptically marked 1960's map of Boston) and a start location (the Hatch shell) and headed back to C's, seeing as between the three of us we had too few tatooes to hang with that crowd. We arrived at the start around 3:20, and got "registered". Just before the race start we were told we would be given the list of checkpoints at Winter Square. Some of us thought that was Winthrop square, but in the end, that didn't mater. At go the 100 odd racers jumped on their bikes and the madness began. We rode right across Storrow drive and onto the streets of Boston. It became immediately obvious that the strategy was to follow people who knew where they were going. So, I jumped on a big group with C, E, and J and we rode to Winter square, wherever that is, and got the list of checkpoints. There were 8 corresponding to the 8 dungeons in the "Legend of Zelda" video game. Here they are: Pierside, 3 Dolphin Way, 02210 St. Johns, 9 Moon St. 02113 Step Inc, 31 Beverley St., 02114 The Dirt Pile, 23 East St., 02141 Ampitheater, Terry Ring Way, 02109 along Quaker Lane, 02109 the end of Carver St., 02116 the Kings Castle, 10 Scotia St., 02115 We busted out maps, which I unwisely didn't have, thinking all maps save the one we got the night previous were forbidden, but then just decided to follow a group to the first checkpoint. Riding with these people was a harrowing experience. Basically, you sprint through the streets, traffic (and traffic laws) be damned. It was a challenge. In looking for the actual check point, C crashed pretty hard, but got back up and continued the race, torn and bloody. We finally got to the first checkpoint, a warehouse on the waterfront that looked the start of a GTA mission, and got our first USPS priority mail envelope, this being a bike messenger race and whatnot. I threw this in my messenger bag, and jumped back on the group. They busted off towards cambridge, but soon I lost them, being simply not able to ride that speed and getting cut off by impenetrable traffic. I got to the bridge by the science museum, and then ended up pairing up with a woman named R, who, as it turns out, is a pro mountain biker and triathlete. She was awesome enough to let me tag along for the next 5 checkpoints. Her style was absolutely fearless: she would take lines into gridlocked oncoming traffic, riding between the cars. It was all I could do to keep up. At Moon st. we hit our second checkpoint, and had to do a shot of tabasco and whiskey to get the envelope. It was unpleasant, but never the less, we did it. We then bike back to the science museum and hit up East st., the checkpoint at which, we were told, had been broken up by security. Undaunted, we headed to 31 Beverly st. where we had to dance around in Too-toos to get our prize. We then hit up the ampitheater on Terry Ring Way (in the naval ship yard), where a wasabi fig and spinning 10 times were the price of completion. Quaker lane, we learned from a fellow racer, was off congress street, so, that way we went. Along that way, we met C, C, J, and E, and road with them for a while, though we took different ways to the checkpoint in the end. We stopped at Quincy Market to ask a policeman where Quaker Lane was. He looked at us, and laughed, and said he was on his way there to break up a group of bike messengers. He then said he was in no particular hurry, and gave us a wink and directions. Dude, you rock! We found the alley, and did 20 pushups for our prize. On the way to the next checkpoint I lost R in traffic, but picked up C, C, E, and J, and we rode together to the end. Carver st. was an alley near the common where we had to meditate and eat cashews, and the final checkpoint, Scotia st., was right by C's house at Fenway. They had no challenge for us, so we proceeded to "Death Mountain", which was a three lap circuit of Boston Common. By the third lap of cranking at maximum velocity, I was very tired. J and C broke off to get a final checkpoint C had missed, and the rest of us headed to the finish, a bar over by Longwood. Here's a map with all the checkpoints. According to the GMAPs pedometer, we rode 15 miles...as the crow flies. What that is in actual miles, nobody knows. The race took about 2.5 hours, and I was never riding any speed less than all out. The race was as exhilarating as it was dangerous, but that's just kind of how life works. I definitely learned a lot of traffic tricks, and maybe even became a touch more agro myself, so, it was definitely worth it.