DC's Dandies & Quaintrelles, in partnership with the Crystal City BID, held the Diamond Derby over the weekend. All I knew before I showed up was that it involved bikes, a parking garage, and a course set up by this guy. So this is what I learned on the first lap (motion starts at :40):
That was fun. The idea was to earn a point for every lap completed and collect points along the way. The part I obviously didn't get was how to collect points along the way, so I finished way down in the standings. I did, however, figure out that we got points for dismounting and carrying the bike through a VéloCity minivan. Hope we didn't do too much damage to it.
There were several other races in the evening, ranging from a kid's event to a real race with qualifying heats and everything. In between there was great food and drinks and people.
In any event, it was a great use of a parking garage that usually sits empty on a weekend. Lots of credit to D&Q and the forward-thinking folks at the Crystal City BID for making this happen.
(I've put up an unedited set of photos here, if you were there and looking for photos of you. I'll get an edited slideshow up later this week. Sorry, I missed the kids' race, so no photos of that.)
Joy
Wheeeeeeee! Very cool idea.
antoine
that looks like a ton of fun
Claude
This was soooo much fun, need more like this.
Payton
Oh, so THAT’s why I didn’t see myself in your photos — because I was in the video instead!