Saturday was the fourth annual Cascadia Cup in beautiful Bellingham, Washington. For those not in the know, the Cup takes place every summer and covers a wide variety of bike games designed to show off style, grace, originality, and ability to coagulate. It’s a day-long event that takes place at various parks in Bellingham and usually culminates at Cornwall Park, or maybe an afterparty at a host’s or participant’s house. There may also be beer/wine drinking. Possibly.

The first couple years I tried to compete until I realized I’m pretty spastic on my bicycle, and it’s tough to bike to work with a broken ride. However, I’m pretty steady with a camera, so I’ve shifted from being an active participant to being the dude with the fancy camera.

The first game I documented – I didn’t catch the name – involved two teams biking around trying to get water balloons into the opponent’s helmet bucket. It started off relaxed, what with players throwing baloons from long range, then descended into spiking them straight into the bucket.

The next round of events involved a lot more pavement, and covered a lot of interesting cycling techniques. Starting with Foot Down, where you ride in an increasingly smaller area without putting your foot down to stablize; to Musical Bikes, which is similar to Foot Down but you must stop when the music does; onto Siamese Bikes, with two riders each powering one pedal; culminating with 23-Skidoo, whereby the cyclist must pop their rear brake while the wheel is over a paint lid, skidding for both distance and grace.

<cue intermission to reload on assorted beers and chips>

The final location covered some long standing games. First up was the Drag Race: you and your partner bicycle to the others’ start location, strip down to your skivvies, bike back to your starting location, put on partner’s clothing, then meet up in the middle to high five. Second game was bike tag, where you pull ribbons off your opponents’ bikes while keeping yours in tact. A lot of crashes usually occur here. The final event for the night, Clown Bike, involvees putting as many people onto a bike and rolling it about 60 feet without anyone falling off. Or the wheel getting taco’d. Spoiler alert: The wheel always gets taco’d.

The Cascadia Cup 2010 Gallery is available on my Flickr feed