The Beer Ride

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Back in the late 90's/early 2000, I rode on a mountain bike "team." We called ourselves Team Freak (hence, my handle.) It was not racing that we trained for (only one of us had racing experience,) rather, we trained for, and participated in, charity rides. Each September, to celebrate the end of summer, we set a course and rode our bikes from bar to bar to bar to bar. We called it the Team Freak Beer Ride. Participation was spotty, and some years we had a low turnout. In 2001, however, we had almost maximum participation, 17 of us in total. It's no surprise that 2001 was the most fun, what with so many of us in the group. We cut the number of bars down to four, which allowed us to stay longer and drink more. It also gave our female participants more time to get rowdy, and get rowdy they did, which made that particular ride the most fun. The photo above is of 17 bikes locked up in front of a Denver pizza place/bar. It was our third bar of the day. Irresponsible? Sure. But our route was mostly bike path, and nobody crashed or got hurt. In fact, we had only two wrecks in all those years, and one of those happened long before we even made it to the first bar. (And that particular crash happened right as a wedding party was walking the bride up the bike path, which hopefully has given the husband and wife a great wedding story, full of blood and unaware-that-a-bride-was-near profanity.) It was always a blast, and I wish I could organize one here in the Pikes Peak region. In the meantime, my memories will have to suffice.