This was the seventh year in a row I’ve taken photos at Beer Bike. It is the the third year in a row I’ve blogged about it…but it never gets old.
For those who don’t feel like checking out back entries, Beer Bike takes place every spring at Rice University (my alma mater).
First, campus gets overtaken by a giant, formerly-Guinness-record-holding water balloon fight. This is where the beer comes in; most people are, um, soaked both inside and out.
Following the water balloon fight, everybody heads to the bike track for the races.
There are three races: alum, women’s and men’s. Each has ten chuggers (women chug 12 ounces of water, men chug 24 ounces; they used to down beer, but water replaced that when people realized it was a lot easier to chug- and therefore made it easier to win races) and ten bikers. As soon as a chugger finishes his water, the flag goes up and the biker goes off. This repeats ten times. First team to finish the relay wins!
Halfway through the men’s race, the track judges decided conditions were too windy (there had been seven crashes already in the race) for biking to continue, so they switched to a Beer Run with five legs left to go. The bikers who had yet to race thus had to go from biking a mile as fast as they could to running a third of a mile as fast as they could. Not the same thing. I don’t envy them that switch at all.
If these photos all look like the same maroon team racing…that’s because I’m biased and photographed mainly those bikers/chuggers from Brown College, where I used to live. One of the perks of not actually being on assignment 