Sunday morning Tony Liuzzi and I met at Peace Coffee in Minneapolis for the annual Urban Assault race. The aggression in the name is misleading - this is mostly about a bunch of bikers getting together for what they call the nation's largest bicycle scavenger hunt. It is an alley cat race, which means that there isn't a specific route - riders are requested to keep legal but are left to their own devices for navigation. We were given five locations in advance, a clue to the sixth, and instructions that we would get a clue to the seventh at the sixth stop. The race had about 350 teams competing, and Tony and I had jokingly given ourselves about a two - two and a half percent chance of winning. To spur us along, C had raced it last year and placed first in the women's division - I was hoping for top twenty-five percent to be honest; I had a cold and am not in great biking shape.
Having meticulously planned out our route, Tony mentioned the morning of the race that he had heard that lines had slowed racers down in the past and that last year's winners had gone the opposite direction and won. Our route - the logical route - put us at the 'mystery stop' first, where we would get our final clue. This gave us the widest latitude location wise - there was little risk of needing to backtrack if we were just starting. Going the opposite way, we were banking that the stop would be in south MPLS, given the density of stops north of 94. We hit the trail hard, almost the first ones out of the chute. We were shortly on the west side of Hiawatha with no one behind us - seemingly everyone else went the other way. We crossed 55 on the pedestrian bridge at 24th, and saw that several other racers had the same idea we did and had caught the light at 28th where we started. Slightly discouraged so early in the race, we stuck with our plan - duck off the Hiawatha trail at the Franklin Light Rail station and head to Midwest Mountaineering via Cedar. This was the first of two decisions that put us in the lead - we were the first to our first task - assembling blocks to form the Clif Bar logo.
From there the course was fairly quiet until we got to Theo Wirth, where we started meeting traffic coming the other way round. At the Walker, our next stop, we were stopped by lines. For me this was lucky - I had felt the cold I have been carrying around (thank you high schoolers) the entire race, and the stretch from Theo Wirth to the Walker (a savvy one where we picked up some time) had been tough on me and I was winded. I sling-shot a pair of shoes into Tony's basket and we were on our way to Loring, where we hoped fervently that we would not be sent back North.
The clue, as we had heard, was a photo of a place. While Tony checked about the rules (we had to deliver a Jack Link jerky wrapper), I saw the photo - it might have been my own house. It was the Birchwood; not only my neighborhood cafe, but practically my second home for years now. Tony and I zipped off to make the checkpoint, along with our final stop; the Cardinal bar on 38th and Hiawatha.
We were pretty optimistic at this point - there were not many people ahead of us that we knew of, though of course we could have missed people going the other way round. We passed two teams going the other direction on Haiwatha, made the stop and headed back.
In the end we finished very well - 6th place overall! I've actually checked the Urban Assault website a few times to make sure it is real (it is here if you want to see it). I'm hoping Tony and I will have some fun photos from some of the stops - we made a good team.
It was hot on race day (9/11) and it was hot yesterday (9/12). But TODAY. My GOODness. It is fall, suddenly and magnificently. Last night I stood in the street for a time with the wind blow from the west and feeling the weather change. Finally biking to school does not reduce me to a pile of sweat. Finally it is just a little bit cold when I wake up in the morning. I can enter the world, rather than waking up to that atmospheric void where the air feels like an extension of my skin and there is nothing between my soul and the lack of a breeze. It is a much better feeling to encounter a chill in the air - to bike into warmth, up from the river. The leave are just starting to think about shifting; last week walking home at night I smelled that first hint of fall in the sweet rotting smell of the leaves on the ground. That smell holds so much promise for me. Fall is a portentous time - Halloween, harvest - it feels much more like a beginning than a new year. Maybe that's because I've been on an academic calendar almost my entire life. Anyway, it is about to be a very beautiful time in the Twin Cities - I am sad that once again I will see October without C, but she will be back here soon enough. Thanks for reading!
Having meticulously planned out our route, Tony mentioned the morning of the race that he had heard that lines had slowed racers down in the past and that last year's winners had gone the opposite direction and won. Our route - the logical route - put us at the 'mystery stop' first, where we would get our final clue. This gave us the widest latitude location wise - there was little risk of needing to backtrack if we were just starting. Going the opposite way, we were banking that the stop would be in south MPLS, given the density of stops north of 94. We hit the trail hard, almost the first ones out of the chute. We were shortly on the west side of Hiawatha with no one behind us - seemingly everyone else went the other way. We crossed 55 on the pedestrian bridge at 24th, and saw that several other racers had the same idea we did and had caught the light at 28th where we started. Slightly discouraged so early in the race, we stuck with our plan - duck off the Hiawatha trail at the Franklin Light Rail station and head to Midwest Mountaineering via Cedar. This was the first of two decisions that put us in the lead - we were the first to our first task - assembling blocks to form the Clif Bar logo.
From there the course was fairly quiet until we got to Theo Wirth, where we started meeting traffic coming the other way round. At the Walker, our next stop, we were stopped by lines. For me this was lucky - I had felt the cold I have been carrying around (thank you high schoolers) the entire race, and the stretch from Theo Wirth to the Walker (a savvy one where we picked up some time) had been tough on me and I was winded. I sling-shot a pair of shoes into Tony's basket and we were on our way to Loring, where we hoped fervently that we would not be sent back North.
The clue, as we had heard, was a photo of a place. While Tony checked about the rules (we had to deliver a Jack Link jerky wrapper), I saw the photo - it might have been my own house. It was the Birchwood; not only my neighborhood cafe, but practically my second home for years now. Tony and I zipped off to make the checkpoint, along with our final stop; the Cardinal bar on 38th and Hiawatha.
We were pretty optimistic at this point - there were not many people ahead of us that we knew of, though of course we could have missed people going the other way round. We passed two teams going the other direction on Haiwatha, made the stop and headed back.
In the end we finished very well - 6th place overall! I've actually checked the Urban Assault website a few times to make sure it is real (it is here if you want to see it). I'm hoping Tony and I will have some fun photos from some of the stops - we made a good team.
It was hot on race day (9/11) and it was hot yesterday (9/12). But TODAY. My GOODness. It is fall, suddenly and magnificently. Last night I stood in the street for a time with the wind blow from the west and feeling the weather change. Finally biking to school does not reduce me to a pile of sweat. Finally it is just a little bit cold when I wake up in the morning. I can enter the world, rather than waking up to that atmospheric void where the air feels like an extension of my skin and there is nothing between my soul and the lack of a breeze. It is a much better feeling to encounter a chill in the air - to bike into warmth, up from the river. The leave are just starting to think about shifting; last week walking home at night I smelled that first hint of fall in the sweet rotting smell of the leaves on the ground. That smell holds so much promise for me. Fall is a portentous time - Halloween, harvest - it feels much more like a beginning than a new year. Maybe that's because I've been on an academic calendar almost my entire life. Anyway, it is about to be a very beautiful time in the Twin Cities - I am sad that once again I will see October without C, but she will be back here soon enough. Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment