On a day we thought would be filled with snow, and wet streets, greated the 80 brave souls from DC, baltimore, Boston, NYC, and of course Philly who turned up at RELoad bags for the Philadelphia Bike Messangers Association (PBMA) Poker Race 2005. This race is a resurection of sorts for the PBMA who had been on hiatius for a few years now. Now fronted by vertren Philly wheelmen, Mike Daily and Stewey, the PBMA was ready to sponser their first race.
This was a bar crawl/ally cat. All of the check points except for the last one were bars, where the drinkers would have to consume a beer and complete a task before their manifest was stampped and they were given a card that would form their poker hand. The non drinkers had the pleasure of compleating an additional task for their card.
This makes for an interesting race of 8 check points. It is not based on speed, even though there was a loosly enforced finishing time of under two hours it gave all of the out of towners and the non couriers who were compeating an equal chance of winning the race. This lead to many racers just sitting down to have a brew with each other and enjoying the race.
Tasks to get a card ranged from just standing around and drinking your beer, to pushups, to drinking strange concotions of bar fluids, to coloring a picture and staying in the lines, which made for some great drawinsg, as this was one of the last bars the racers had to stop at. All of the bars that were check points are favorite hang outs of the Philadelphia Messanger Community.
The afterparty was held in an art collective/warehouse, where the free pizza donated by the bike lawyer and free beer donated by PBR flowed while racers filled in and handed over their best poker hand. The two wheelchairs in the warehouse were soon turned into a wheelie competiton, akin to a regular old track stand competion. Djs Half Breed and Prom King spun the tunes deep into the night as the party raged on and the exhausted and drunk racers enjoyed the rest of the night
Sponsers for this race included RELoad bags, Pabst Blue Ribbon, El Neutron, Jinxed Clothing, Dirt Rag, Stuart Leon (bike lawyer), Fabric Horse, Print Liberation, etc.
Winners were:
Best Hand (five nines) Nicholas Hans (Philly) Prize = fabric horse
First Male Scotty Philly TimeCycle
First Female Kate Philly One Hour