Schlitz & Giggles
Boston
February 25, 2006

Registration at 1pm; I got off the bus with my friend Jesika at 1:25. I wanted to ride down the ramp to the street, but she made us walk through the station. Said she didn't know where it led. Fair enough; neither did I. We hit the street and rode through fresh snow upon fresh snow to Roxbury, finding one-ways giving way to wrong ways and all kinds of vice-versa. Ten minutes after we got off the bus we're at the start, at a really nice park in Roxbury. All cities look better under snow, but Roxbury really came into it's own on this day. Nothing but red brick and trees in every direction. Fine, until we realized we hadn't bought beer yet.

When we arrived everyone was looking at their manifests, trying to make sense of the 50+ checkpoints through contents of tall cans and spliffs. I caught up with some New York people--more so than those who'd promised to come up two weeks before. The turnout was strong, actually. But when the Independent Fabrication people unleashed us to the snowy streets it was a little anti-climactic. People milled around for a while to look at their routes and their maps (I looked at mine). The first stop was in Southie, right by the harbor. I overshot it, then nearly rode up into the USPS slip. When I found it, I was nearly back downtown. It was a Globe newsstand, guarded by a young woman who made exaggerated Nascar-ish arm motions as I approached. "Schiltz or giggles?" she asked, and I thought it might be some kind of truth or dare/choose your own adventure type of thing, where one box opens up to a cooler full of beer, the other w/ some kind of prank. But I was merely to write down as POD what was written on the side of the box. Boring. The rest of the checkpoints were like this, but worse. Everyone copied answers, and I wondered what was the point. I love riding around Boston, and I actually do enjoy riding in the snow--It's quieter, and adds a nice challenge. But I couldn't help feeling like this day was degenerating into bad summer camp. I rode alone out to the rest of the mandatory checkpoints and made it back to IF before they closed. But the race wasn't over yet. We were to do a no-hands shot of whisky and get our picture taken professionally, and had time to get warm and dry, and drink whatever beer was rolling around in our bags, all of which was nice. But once the clock hit four we were sent back out into the snow to finish the checkpoints, not to return until after six. Lots of people went to the Other Side cafe, supposedly to rack up extra points w/ bar tabs. Jesika and I opted for a late lunch in Somerville, where we waited out the closure. We were the first back in, but boy did we not win. Extra points for bringing Schlitz back; extra points for bar tabs; sorry, didn't do it. This turned out to be the only party I've been to where there was too much beer. Harpoon had sponsored and there were tubs of IPA, most of which was ignored for as long as we were there. We stayed for the goldsprints, caught up with the King Kog people and more New Yorkers who were late for the race but showed up for what turned out to be a pretty great party, complete with indoor footdown and naked track stand. Too bad we didn't stay--back over to Cambridge with cheap Scotch and soda by 10pm.

A lot of people got really into this race, making trips to Watertown and W. Roxbury, etc, even though they had the answers for those checkpoints, and by the time it was over I kind of wish I'd gone back out too.

-Dave