beerbike*com

[Beer-Bike was held on April 14, 2007, rescheduled from its original date two weeks prior. No alumni race was held, and the men’s and women’s races were forced onto foot by heavy rains the night before. This year’s recap, as always, is provided by Jen Cooper ’90, whose complete race data will soon be available at the 2000s race stats page.]

Race recap

Thanks to another crazy, stormy Friday night/Saturday morning (including temps in the 50s and 30 mph gusts), the rescheduled 2007 Beer-Bike was forced to become another Beer-Run. Held early yesterday morning, some colleges had only small groups of fans, but not us! The Will Rice stands were completely full of green “Mighty Drunks” shirts and the chanting was pretty loud…

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Flickr is a popular photo-sharing service where users can upload their photos for friends or for the whole world to see. Flickr users classify their photos using “tags”—short keywords that help organize the whole world’s photography. They can also submit their photos to community photo “pools” based around common interests and subjects.

I bring this up because there are some great Beer-Bike photos on Flickr. Adam Baker has a nice Beer-Bike photo roll, to start with. From there you can explore all Flickr photos tagged “beerbike”, and then branch out to photos tagged “riceuniversity”. Finally, check out the Rice University group, which is always looking for new photos of the Rice campus, its inhabitants, and its surroundings.

Update: Other Flickr users with Beer-Bike 2006 photo rolls:

Beer-Bike 2006 from broken bones

Beer-Bike 2006! from keylemon

Beer-Bike 2006 from greenleigh

Beer-Bike 2006 from eyrieowl

Jen Cooper ’90 offers her recap of this weekend’s race (with a WRC slant, of course):

Will Rice Beer-Bike 2006

Malt Disney: Bikety Boppity Booze

Alumni: 1st place (aka Larry’s Revenge)
WRC’s alum team featured gods & goddesses from FIVE decades · Drew Tucker ‘86 came out of the pit at the back of the pack, sat on a few wheels, and slowly gained ground – the wind on the back stretch was brutal. He finished with the leaders, and Jim Davis ‘77 & Hanszen rider #2 pulled away from the group. Aubrey Bergauer ‘05 grabbed the lead, and thenTommy Dang ‘03 extended it. We weren’t really threatened by Hanszen after that (everyone else was way, way back there) though the wind on the backstretch made the rest of our guys really work for it: Scott Whitaker ‘67, Amy Tucker ‘88, Ani Patel ‘03, Elliud Ramirez ‘02, Ben Gumpert ‘99 and the ever-steady Mark Jenkins ‘83 (riding in his 16th alumni race).

The chugging deities this year were captain Scott Selinger ‘05, Eric Williams ‘05, Mark Jeffcoat ‘98, Don Clayton ‘83, Richard Adams ‘04, Kevin Brown ‘03, Shay Har-Noy ‘04, Nick Henderson ‘05, Rachel Davis ‘05 and Jim Loudin ‘05.

Women: 4th place
The Will Rice women had a few weak riders at the beginning, but steadily made their way from last place to a solid 4th place finish. Brown, our eternal nemesis it seems, took the title again, and I can’t remember who got 2nd & 3rd.

Men: 3rd place
This was an exciting race to watch – the pack stuck together for the first few riders, and WRC wisely sat with it. Jones and GSA pulled away, and for a while GSA led the race, but Jones eventually caught them. Jones pulled away, and Will Rice made up a lot of ground on GSA, but finished just a few seconds behind the “old guys.”

Details
Check out the Beer-Bike Tshirt gallery that Dan Sandler ‘99 has helped me put together. If you’ve got a shirt that’s not currently shown, send me the digital file! And, yes, I am collecting shirt art from the other lowly colleges.

Also, my Beer-Bike stats have been updated and the RPC’s Beer Bike site should have final standings posted in a few days. FYI, check out the list of all-time winners – if you ignore Beer-Run in 2003 and GSA’s sole title in 2004, every Beer-Bike title since 1996 has been won by Will Rice, Jones or Brown.

Start making plans for Beer-Bike 2007 – the 50th anniversary of the original race. We’ll definitely have to do something special for that one!

See ya next year!

“I owe the Rice EMS people a big debt of gratitude. I should like to have thanked them personally, but I was unconscious while we were together.”

Larry Fossi (of the eponymous Larry-Bike) has an article in last week’s Thresher about his experience in this year’s race.

“The accident this year bears an interesting resemblance to one that occurred 34 years ago. In 1971, a car — whose driver escaped, never to be identified — drove onto the track in the middle of a race, sending rider Bob Bridge (Hanszen ’73) sprawling. After that, race organizers blocked the entrances to the parking lot where the race was taking place. No one then dreamed that pedestrians — and team members no less — would ever pose a similar problem.”

(In lieu of original content, we rely again upon the irrepressible, omnipresent, and well-hinted Jen Cooper to report on the 2005 race. Read on!)

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Jen Cooper has updated her Beer-Bike Stats Galore, the most obsessively accurate list of BB race statistics that we know of.

Will Rice christens the president’s pool for the very last time plus GSA wins men’s race… really!

Alumni
After a false start and then a botched start, the alumni race began. Will Rice’s team featured biking gods & goddesses from four different decades, and chuggers ranging from class of 1988 to 2003. Mike Leman ‘01 came out of the pit with the crowd and slowly gained ground to put second rider Larry “the fossil” Fossi ‘79 just within reach of the lead. He captured the lead by the end of his two laps, and Tommy Dang ‘03 took it from there. After that, it wasn’t even close. We lapped everyone! (Note to Todd Nix & Craig Mielke … you still have to come back next year!) Best alum times for the day were by Mark Jenkins ‘83, Carl Williams ‘00, Scot Salmon ‘97 and Mike Leman ‘01, all of whom rode around 1:28. Will Rice now owns 18 of a possible 23 titles (including last year’s Beer-Run).

Women
Will Rice started with the pack and steadily rose through the ranks to take the lead around the 7th/8th rider. No penalties and smart rides by all led the women to their first victory since 1999. Perennial rival Brown finished eight seconds back.

Men
Sitting among the top four teams for first several riders, Will Rice eventually pulled into first before an unfortunate crash on the turn near the pit dropped them back about 25 seconds behind the leaders – GSA, Brown & Jones. The men did their best to catch up, and eventually passed Brown but couldn’t catch Jones or the amazingly solid GSA riders, who led without challenges from that point on to capture their first-ever Beer-Bike title. WRC finished third after Jones, but beer penalties put us fourth behind Baker. Brown crashed late in the race so finished far back.

So… we were pretty damn close to a sweep. But hey, if we can’t win the men’s race at least no other college did! It seems only fitting that Will Rice be the last college to enjoy the presidential pool privilege (when Dr. Gillis steps down as president this summer, the house is being converted to offices and the pool will be closed forever).

See ya next year!
jen cooper ‘90

Lost: Team Wiess War Pig.

One large inflatable balloon in the shape of a pig with tusks. Color: Goldenrod or yellow. Markings include the words “TEAM WIESS” on the side in black block lettering. The pig was tied up at Rice University in Houston, TX. It’s filled with helium and we’re hoping that when it eventually leaks out the pig will fall back down without hurting anyone or damaging property, though “Trailer Crushed by Flying Pig” would be a fantastic headline.

Brian Dolecki (WRC ’00) reports that this has earned Rice a mention on general-purpose Web-mockery site Fark.com. Other War Pig links: Wiess College’s Beer-Bike Traditions page; Mark Maxham’s (Wiess ‘90) thorough exploration of War Pig construction.

Final winners of the 2004 race:

Men: GSA (24:48)
Women: Will Rice (17:25)
Alumni: Will Rice (16:17)

Jen Cooper has the final times for each team (scroll to the bottom). [Update: the official Beer-Bike page now also has the results as well.]

Good morning, race fans!

It’s no secret that beerbike.com has been on a bit of a hiatus. (We’re sort of embarrassed about it, if you want to know the truth.) No more. Just in time for race day 2004, we’d like to present a well-rested and refreshed beerbike.com.

The old site served us well in 2000 when we first launched it. Eric Rechlin did a great job of keeping it running through the 2003 race (during which, coincidentally, all race participants ended up running as well). It will take some time to move the old content over to the new site, so for now you’ll still need to visit the old pages to access such items as Jason Boyd’s Complete Race Stats.

We have big plans for the new site, however, including a race day photo gallery and Beer-Bike t-shirt collection (which we expect to develop over the next few months). The bike coordinators will be able to post news items and stories throughout the year, especially in the weeks following the ‘04 race and leading up to race day 2005.

In short, welcome back to Beer-Bike—the Will Rice Invitational. Please enjoy your stay, but do remember: Will Rice Will Sweep.

—Dan Sandler