The 1st Annual Beater Olympics - How I Became Bike-urious

I will freely admit that I'm a world class cheapskate. Not having any dough to spend is constantly getting in the way of the expensive hobbies I want to have, like motorsports. I’ve raced a car in the 24 Hours of Lemons series for years (though the whole team took 2015 off for personal reasons). But honestly, even endurance racing $500 cars is too expensive for my wallet.

I’ve often lamented that there was no equivalent race series for bottom-of-the-barrel motorcycles; the closest thing I’ve found is “run what you brung” dirt events. Then the press release from Bike-Urious announcing the Beater Olympics came across my electronic desk.

Reporting Live From Beater Olympics I

The idea of the Beater Olympics is a series of competitions for two-person teams on bikes worth about $500, culminating in a relay race and a party afterwards. It was not strictly analogous to the endurance road race events Lemons puts on, but it was an opportunity to compete against other bikes and riders for next to nothing.

The events included the popular slow race, bike limbo, transporter, paperboy, drag race, and more. Needless to say, they had my attention. Seems like they got the attention of at least 15 other people in the immediate Southern California area too.

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I was late getting out to Apple Valley, CA's Grange Motor Circuit because there was an estate sale full of old bike stuff I couldn’t pass up. On top of that, I didn't know that the track is about five miles from the nearest paved road.

The facility seems like the race track equivalent of skateboarding a drained pool at an abandoned mansion. It's like a perfect little private track, plopped in the middle of the empty desert where the land is cheap and there are no neighbors to complain. It's the perfect sized venue for an event like this because the whole thing felt like a private party.

The minute I rolled up and introduced myself to Abhi, the brains behind Bike-urious, I was asked if I had brought gear with me. I had to force my size XL head into someone else’s M sized helmet, then added the giant emoticon foam head to become a last minute replacement rider. I had missed the slow race, but was pointed toward a worn out 1980s XR350, dubbed the Santa Maria, which if you remember was the ship that Columbus sank on his trip to America.

I then set out to do the limbo.

The Races

We’ve never met, but I'm easily 6’2" and have a huge head even without a helmet on. On the tallest bike there, with a helmet and foam head, I never really had a chance, but I gave it my all. I got under the tallest bar, but barely.

The next pass I knocked it off, but they gave me one more try.

Maybe on a bike I was more familiar with I could have Rollie Free-ed my way under it, lying flat on the seat, but even belly and chin on tank I couldn’t make it.

And there was no way the XR350 was going to beat a moped with the rider sitting on the rear luggage rack and the bars folded back anyway.

The next event was dubbed The Transporter and involved riding laps of the track while carrying a plastic cup full of water. One of the best things about the whole Beater Olympics was the improvisational nature of it, and of course, none of the teams had planned on how to do something like this. The start was the toughest part because you need both hands to work the clutch and throttle—except for the moped.

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