New Belgium Urban Assault Ride – Berkeley

Apparently, New Belgium has been putting on this awesome ride for a few years now, but this is the first year that it’s come to Berkeley.

The rules are simple. Each two person team has seven checkpoints (5 with known addresses and 2 “mystery checkpoints”) to hit, each with an unknown challenge. First team back to the Start/finish wins! Sounds like fun, right? Well, the ride drew an interesting crowd, from racers to tandem families…

From super heroes to super women…

From food stuffs to wildlife…

Even music lovers and unicyclists!

I convinced Amy to team up with me, even though she had just completed the ridiculously difficult Wildflower Half IM the day before. I, myself, had just come off two consecutive hard rides. Still, I figured the competition wouldn’t be all that tough, the actual riding mileage is pretty short, and I know Berkeley pretty well…maybe we have a shot at doing well!

There was a quiz a couple days before the race to give a potential advantage of a couple of minutes over the rest of the group. Lots of google searches later, and we had a 90% score on the quiz (which was the highest score of any team), which put us in the first wave. Unfortunately there was a LOT of other teams that were also in that first wave. Oh well. There was also a clue the day before which was supposed to lead us in the direction of the first mystery checkpoint. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had a good guess at where it was. Too late now! The horn blew and we were off!

I opted to take my touring bike, and swapped the pedals for platforms so I wouldn’t have to worry about running around in my roadie shoes. Amy had a different strategy, if you notice the running shoes she has stuffed inside her jersey pockets (she ended up losing one!)

The Start/Finish was at MLK Park. The first stop was only a couple of blocks away at Mike’s Bikes, where they had set up a skateboard bowling course. We got off to a slow-ish start, as just about every other time had the same idea to go over to Mike’s first! I think the people there were overwhelmed, because it took us a little while to figure out what we actually had to do. On the first try, I pushed Amy all the way down the lane! I didn’t realize that there was a line that I wasn’t supposed to cross…so we had to do it twice. Oh well.

Next, we decided to go for the first mystery spot, which I had guessed was at the Berkeley Rose Garden. If you know the area, you know that this is up a pretty steep hill! A chance to make up some time. Indeed, we passed quite a few people on the way, riding their fixies, or taking a poorly planned route up an even steeper hill. Then when we got there, we got our clue to the next mystery spot: a word scramble.

Huh?

We stood there looking at it for a minute or so…but couldn’t figure it out. So, we just said forget it, and went on to the next known checkpoint, figuring that we would figure it out along the way.

Halfway down to REI, I realized the answer: Witter Rugby Field. Damn…if we would have figured it out when we were up the hill, we could have gone straight over and saved a few minutes. Oh well.

REI had a puzzle set up, where you had to figure out how to fit all of these geometric shapes into a square. We fumbled around with it for a couple of minutes, but I think we were pretty quick to get it.

Next, we took a quick jaunt down a few block to Clif Bar HQ (I didn’t even know that was there!), where they had an awesome Big Wheel course set up in the parking lot. It’s very strange: you get used to riding 172.5mm crank arms, then you get on a Big Wheel with ~50mm crank arms…it’s a little discombobulating. And plastic wheels = super fun power slides!!

Next stop was out on the waterfront and piggyback polo; I carried Amy on my back while she whacked a ball with a polo mallet across a course and back. I think we were pretty quick on that one (and I think by this point, Amy had stopped bothering to change her shoes).

After that, we headed over to San Pablo park on the South and of Berkeley for a game called “Paperboy”. In this game, I had to ride around a marked course and huck newspapers from a messenger bag, while Amy stood about 50 feet away trying to catch 3 of them in a little box. This game was tough. I went through 3 bags full of newspapers. You were supposed to keep moving while you threw, but most people had resorted to stopping their bikes and tossing the newspapers while standing…not really the same. We definitely lost quite a few minutes here…I think 2 of the newspapers actually landed inside the box and bounced out! Oh well…eventually we got 3.

The last stop was the second mystery checkpoint at the rugby field, which is up above the stadium…more steep climbing! I goofed up and went up Durant instead of Channing, which I forgot ends in a staircase…so we had to go a couple of extra blocks.

After hitting the last checkpoint, we bombed through campus back to MLK park, where they had set up an inflatable obstacle course for the finish. We ended the race in 4th place out of 60 in the Coed division and 9th overall out of 112 teams that finished, with a time of 1:34:35. No podium!


Now...the fun didn't stop there. The after party included: lots of free beer, free swag/food/drink from REI, Keen, Clif Bar, New Belgium, and Honest T. New Belgium even busted out this keg-hauling beer bike!

This awesome lady would roll around the party, then stop and make people dance in order to receive free beer. Sounds like a deal to me! I also met a guy named Johnny, who builds and sells custom Coaster Brake Wheels...but we met in an odd way. He was sporting an interesting outfit adorned with real alligator heads attached to football pads. Anyways...we were dancing for our beer and somehow, I was bit by one of his alligators. For real. It drew blood.

Then, there was the raffle! This wasn't any ordinary raffle. You had to compete for your prizes! First up was the mini bike limbo.

They let everyone ( who wanted to) compete in this event. they would go through, and then lower the bar 2 inches each round. I made it through 2 rounds, Amy's friend Steven made it through 3. As you can see from the picture on the left...not as easy as it looks! The kid on the right ended up taking it!

There were other fun/ridiculous events as well, including a mini bike race around the fountain:

A "keg stilts" race:

Then they called my number! "We need 8 people down here with the last number 0 on their raffle ticket". So I hurried down. They told us to pair up; I quickly paired up with the Metromint racer that had won the Coed division. Then they started to explain the game, which involved plungers and PVC pipe...I'll let you figure it out from the pictures:

We were the only all male team....and yea, we won! I got a new set of Giro shades. Awesome.

So there you have it. We didn't stay till the end, because we were starving and decided to walk over to Cancun for some burritos! Overall, it was an incredibly fun day, and I will definitely do it again if they come back.