“Are you ready?? Well, if you’re not, too bad. Go!” Kona bike shop manager Meg Coulter sends the riders off with a ringing of the rims. She organised this ride for Northwest Tune Up as a way to get people out to see the city and to offer something for people attending NW Tune-Up that may not be interested in mountain biking. An Allycat is essentially a scavenger hunt. Teams are provided a manifest and must visit as many checkpoints as they can in an allotted amount of time and document every step of the way. (No photo? Didn’t happen.)
The teams split off on their planned route to see how many stops they can make before time is up.
After the teams split off on their respective hunts, Meg raced back to the Kona Bike Shop to get the finish line ready. A table full of swag for the participants and winners, and one more obstacle between the racers and that table. This obscure finish line is comprised of a baseball bat, kids’ bikes, and two cones. As the racers approach the finish line, tasting relaxation as they get closer they will soon realize Meg is instructing each team to spin around the baseball bat three times, hop on a kids bike, and ride figure eights around the cones. After two figure eights, they are finally done with Bellingham’s most quirky gravel/road race… or so they thought.
Riders were awarded extra points for things such as wearing a costume, or picking up trash.
In the end, it was Team Twinning that took the victory by an astounding margin. That’s what you get when you put a bunch of semi-pro athletes together that are obsessed with winning. They can’t even take scavenger hunts lightly, and they probably have a mantra that goes something like “if you’re not first, you’re last!” Congrats to siblings Ryan and Becky Gardner, Gretchen Leggit, and Clayton Wang for crushing everyone else’s hopes and dreams of a victory. Thanks for riding with us!
