Beer Bike

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Fishy Beer Bike

Posted by Ivy

I mentioned in the previous post that I’ve photographed Beer Bike for seven years.

And while it is certainly true that the key to good event coverage is always looking for the contextual and visual surprises…it’s also true that sometimes, you just want to try out a different lens. Like a fisheye.

When I rented the fisheye for this trip, I essentially did it for one reason. Everything else, every other picture I took, was just icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.

I wanted this picture:

This is not a groundbreaking, earth-shattering photo by any means, but I like it for two reasons. The first is that I’ve never seen this picture made before (oh, CPOY, you’ve taught me so much!). The second is that, like I said, this is almost exactly the shot I wanted…I wanted an aerial overview of the whole event (when I was deciding on whether to rent or not, Chris very correctly pointed out that the aerial was almost necessary to justify using a fisheye in the first place). This very rarely happens; it’s not often that I have an idea for a photo and then it actually works out as planned.

I thought at first I would just go up to the first level of the football stadium, where there are always some spectators, and see what I could see.

I took a few shots there, but they weren’t right at all. The curve of the horizon wasn’t prominent enough (nor was I high enough to get a convex curve), and the distortion wasn’t working with me.

(This is how not to shoot fisheye photos. Womp.)

So I went higher, to the top of the stadium. It was also the first time I’d ever thought to shoot from this vantage point (I know, I know…), which turned out well for some other photos as well (see previous post).

And from there, it worked. Thanks, fisheye!

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Beer Bike

Posted by Ivy

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 :)

(28b) Beer Bike: Can't Rain On Our Parade

Posted by Ivy

Photos taken March 20.

The rest will be up on Facebook or Flickr sometime tomorrow (I hope).

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Puppies playing while their owners watch the water balloon parade from the safety of the sidelines.

Dudes in capes running to catch up with their college’s trucks

Rice students: balancing work and play since 1912

Alums watching the parade/staying out of the rain

Jones College as viewed from the steps of Keck Hall

FIGHT. (That’s not rain splashing in the background)

It’s important to come prepared to these kinds of things

Ammunition, please!

Enjoying a brief calm in the (literal and figurative) storm

Right after the parade had finished and everybody had run out of water balloons, it started raining again. Ugh.

On days when it’s not cold and rainy, the main event of Beer Bike are (surprise!) bike relay races around our outdoor cycling track. The teams have twenty members–ten bikers and ten chuggers. A chugger has to drink 12 (for girls) or 24 (for guys) ounces of water as fast as they can; after they finish, a biker immediately starts on a set number of laps. Once the laps are completed, the next chugger goes, and so on and so forth. Some colleges train for months for Beer Bike, and it’s pretty disappointing when the races get postponed.

They did hold the alumni race this year, because alums tend to come back to Rice specifically for Beer Bike and it would be hard to postpone this particular event. The alumni had to do a Beer Run instead of biking, which, sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of because I was busy being freezing and wet in the alumni tent (also, I didn’t want to get my camera gear soaked…). I did take this one after they had finished the Beer Run and just before I left the track area.

At least we got the water balloon fight in!

RICE FIGHT NEVER DIE.

(28a) Beer Bike, pre-parade

Posted by Ivy

Photos taken on March 20.

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Rice University + hundreds of thousands of water balloons + hundreds of college kids + early morning wakeup calls + pouring rain = 2010 Beer Bike parade.

Balloons loaded in the trucks pre-parade

Alumni reunions

Brown College getting ready for the parade…right before it starts to rain

Brown moves out in spite of the rain

Remnants

Houston and Hendrix: Spring Break part one

Posted by Ivy

This spring break makes the third year running that I’ve been in at least two different places for the course of the vacation. I can never decide which trips I want to make, and usually just opt for going everywhere I possibly can (afford). I kind of outdid myself this year, though, because this year I also had a free round-trip on Southwest…which meant I could go even more places for what it normally costs me to do the usual two-destinations break (I suspect I also packed so much in because winter in Columbia made me very, very antsy to get out and go exploring).

It happened that Beer Bike was going on down at Rice the first weekend of break, which was a huge stroke of luck, especially since I didn’t make it to Homecoming in the fall. So I got to crash in my old dorm for a couple of days (with my old roomie, no less! Score!), visit with all of the amazing people I hadn’t seen since graduation, and, of course, check out the bike races and water balloon fight. Unfortunately, I foolishly left my telephoto back IN the dorm while all of the latter events were going on, so I didn’t get many good pictures of the festivities.

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[Members of Jones College (purple shirts) squaring off against Brown College (maroon shirts- BSWB!) during the pre-Beer Bike water balloon parade.]

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[Me and John Broadway during the races themselves, as reflected in the sunglasses of a guy from Baker. I was a bad journalist and never got the guy’s name, but then again, I can never use this photo for anything, anyway, since my camera’s pretty prominent in it].

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[Will Rice College maintaining its lead over Brown during the women’s race. WRC won by .04 of a second, once penalties were factored in, and, incidentally, swept all three races (alum, men’s, women’s). This is at once impressive and depressing.]

After two whirlwind days in Texas, I headed north and west to Seattle, where my friends Ian and Sarah live, and where my friend Derek was also visiting on his spring break. We spent some time visiting  the islands of Puget Sound and checking out Pike Place Market/other random tourist things, but most of the time were just relaxing and doing a whole lot of nothing.  On this leg of the trip, my camera battery died, and, as I have somehow lost the charger, I ended up using my little point-and-shoot quite a bit.

20090323_0682_edit[This is Derek’s book jacket picture (he has yet to write the actual book, but at least this part is good to go), which was taken during our trip to Camano Island]

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[Ian and Sarah’s puppy, Dugan, running around Camano Island]

20090326_0762[No trip to Seattle is complete without stopping to pay respects at Hendrix’s grave. ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.]