Barcycle

Barcycle was a day long bicycle race held each year, during the summer, in Los Gatos, CA in the early through late 80's. Unlike a typical bicycle race, participants were not normally known for their athletic prowess but more for their uncanny drinking abilities. Participation ranged from 25 to 75 riders aged 18 to 25.

For the event, a coordinator would map out a route that included all bars in the downtown Los Gatos vicinity (and they were plentiful). Participants were required to peddle their way to each stop on the pre-determined route and chug down a pint of beer before proceeding to the next mapped locale. The winner was the first person to successfully complete the circuit.

Although I knew a lot of people who participated in the race, never did I have the desire to put myself through that type of drink-cycling torture. It was, however, comical to witness the festivities and the ultimate self destruction of the participants by the end of the race. It wasn't uncommon to see missing teeth, black eyes, and broken arms after a long day of barcycling.

A bar cycle is a bunch of yuppie idiots riding their bicycles to one local dive bar and shitty hole in the wall after another on a list created for the event in a vain attempt to act like the real bikers with their motorcycles going on Fun Runs and Lady Runs; but in this sense with the space eclipsed, a barcycle is a barstool mounted to a platform with four wheels, a small 50cc two-stroke engine or bigger, and all the gearings and linkage to make this deadly thing operational are attached.

Although, I am almost positive the person I saw tooling about the pits at the drag strip was on his own privately manufactured barcycle, making the only possiblity of owning one of your own is building it yourself. So, go forth, manufacture a barstool go-cart of your own, and make the next walk of shame to the head after one too many pints a little more graceful.