The Black Cat Alleycat Race

I participated in The Black Cat last night. It was an Alleycat race, which are unsanctioned bicycle races usually involving checkpoints or point gathering. Last night was a checkpoint race. At the start, we got a set of points to go to as defined by address or intersection. The objective was to register at each point, in whatever order you felt best, and get to the end as quickly as possible.

At each checkpoint you had to do something different in order to earn your signoff. For example, at the first one you had to either chug a can of energy drink or do 20 pushups. At the second you were adorned with cat whiskers as shown in the photo above. At the fifth it was shots of vodka. You get the idea.

So many people showed up for this race that Pamela, the race organizer, ran out of manifests so some of us went as teams. It was a great time and took about an hour of sprinting around Atlanta.

In case you’re interested, here were the checkpoints:

• Oakland Cemetery (start)
• 274 Walker Street (Castleberry Hill)
• Luckie St. and Alexander
• 5th Street Bridge
• 13th Street and Peachtree Walk
• 15th Street and Peachtree
• Ralph McGill and Boulevard
• Ponce De Leon and Myrtle St
• The Local (end, 758 Ponce De Leon)

We did the route in this order. In retrospect, that wasn’t the best choice of routes but I had forgotten my grease-pencil map of downtown so we couldn’t chart it better. We also did some amusing cyclo-cross action through GA Tech’s campus, running up stairs with our bikes.

I’ll point to pictures when they come online. I did not personally take any except for this crappy cell phone photo.

Here’s a video of the post-party at The Local.
(Vimeo was eating my website, so here’s a link instead of an embed)

THE BLACK CAT : Friday the 13th Alleycat afterparty from Drew Tyndell on Vimeo.