It's a wild ride at Dead Baby Bikes' Downhill and Messenger Challenge

First off, Dave Ranstrom wants to make something clear: If he had known the event would get this big, this chaotic and this infamous, he might have thought twice about the club name.

But within a culture written in road-rash scars that resemble relief maps, in arm-length tattoos and 40-mph downhill runs on bikes with beer in the water bottles (and no brakes), the name Dead Baby Bikes hardly shocked anyone. It made them laugh. Around here, second thoughts are as rare as 401(k)s and health insurance.


		Mike Urban / P-I
	With just enough strength left to keep hold of the beer in his water bottle, Herman Beans rides a pedal-powered centrifuge during the party after the weekend's Eighth Annual Downhill and Messenger Challenge.

Indeed, as Ranstrom talked about the Seattle bike club's history at its Eighth Annual Downhill and Messenger Challenge this weekend, an informal collection was under way to help pay the emergency-room bill for a racer who badly injured his wrist earlier Friday night in the downhill race from Beacon Hill to the Boeing Field airport district.

"I think he got a slight concussion, too," Ranstrom said. "But he'll be OK. And he'll be back. Someone always crashes."

If not here, then on the job. A noisy, raucous celebration of messenger bike culture -- or counterculture, some say -- the Dead Baby bike club's annual bash is part competition, part punk concert and part pedal-power festival for cyclists who shun red lights, Lycra and fancy bikes and who sometimes carbo-load until they are carbo-loaded.

It's a nod to the non-famous, the pedal jockeys worldwide who also earn a living with legs of steel in intense cycle competitions but don't get rock-star girlfriends, fawning articles and TV coverage.

"This," said Pete, who said he had "reasons" not to provide his last name and who sipped from a black water bottle presumably not filled with water, "is who we are. We are not so good with rules."


		Mike Urban / P-I
	Solid Gold test-rides a minibike before the race from Beacon Hill to the Boeing Field airport district. Some riders hopped aboard 7-foot Tall Bikes.

Started in 1997 as a ride for the handful of Dead Baby bike shop workers and their friends, the Downhill has grown into a major, 400-person party, with clubs and messengers and bike enthusiasts arriving from Vancouver, B.C., Minneapolis, Portland and elsewhere.

The Cyclecide club from San Francisco trucked up a pedal-powered, 15-foot, two-person Ferris Wheel and a low-slung spinner (think of a seesaw crossed with a centrifuge). Bikers arrived on single-speed track bikes, on fully raked pedal choppers, on three wheelers, on chain-drive garbage cans.

The brave (and the aforementioned carbo-loaded) sometimes rode the treacherous Tall Bikes, teetering 7-foot bicycles built with two frames, one welded atop the other. Others competed in the no-rules, not-exactly city-sanctioned downhill race, the track stand competition (balancing on the bike, feet on the pedals while still), the bunny hop and the midnight Huffy heave. The celebratory pi�ata was modeled on a Hummer.

Prizes included free tattoos. Trophies went to the winners of the men's and women's downhill races. The run started on Beacon Hill at Java Love Espresso. It ended about three miles away in front of the party warehouse under state Route 99 on East Marginal Way South. The course was whatever route got riders there fastest.

For the men's winner, the trophy was a mounted, skewered baby doll painted silver.

This hearkens back to the club's name and its Belltown origins. Originally located in a room behind the Rendezvous bar in the middle 1990s, Ranstrom's budding bike club and bike shop didn't have a name until someone pointed out that the room's previous tenant had nailed a baby doll to the wall.

Cue impulse decision.


		Mike Urban / P-I
	The more competitive bike messengers were undaunted by a slow freight train that split the race course. Others were content to wait for the train to pass.

"Someone said, 'Let's call it Dead Baby Bikes,' and it started from there," Ranstrom said. Soon after the shop was born, he and some buddies decided to hold a downhill race for the local messenger community and anyone else crazy enough to participate.

He forgot one thing: the Torchlight Parade. They mistakenly planned the Capitol Hill-to-Belltown run the same night.

The (unofficial) first-ever downhill race and the (official) parade route intersected.

As Ranstrom remembers it:

"We had about 70 racers. We only planned it a month out. We found out too late it was headed through the Torchlight Parade. What's that, like, 100,000 people in downtown? The riders just bombed right through the parade, hitting all kinds of (things). The race ended at my shop. Almost immediately, I had 20 cops on my doorstep.


		Mike Urban / P-I
	During the massive party that followed the bike race, one man pounces upon the "Humvee" pi�ata in an attempt to break it apart. The Downhill has grown into a 400-person party drawing riders from Vancouver, B.C., Minneapolis and elsewhere.

"I just kept telling them, 'I love Seafair. I love Seafair.' I told them the race was a celebration of Seafair."

Seven years later, it's still going, although Ranstrom, now 36, has learned to select better nights for the race. Dead Baby now is the name only of the 50-member club (50 percent messengers) and his bike shop evolved into Counterbalance Cycles in Queen Anne.

Friday night, the lineup included bands such as Audio Infidels, Bristle and Hell, and human-powered carnival rides and contests that make the X Games seem mild -- at least until the X Games are held in traffic.

Downhill riders get to pick their own numbers among those available and can keep them the following year if they continue to compete. Fractions are allowed. Obviously, some digits are more popular than others. Ranstrom's is 13. He was born on a Friday the 13th.

"Everyone wants it," he said. "But it's mine."

Men's downhill co-winners Rick Sappos, 29, and Tim Lewis, 35, said they were elated to win from within the pack of more than 100 racers. Women's winner Suzanne Carlson, 36, said it was her third downhill try and her first win in any cycling competition.

In pursuit of victory, she and the men's winners had to improvise when a parked train blocked the race route. The pack of front-runners threw their bikes across a flatcar, clambered over and remounted for a sprint finish. The woman who was leading Carlson dropped a chain in the process.

"I passed her to win. I got a little lucky."

Lewis is not a professional messenger either. He's a telephone operator. He said the Dead Baby Downhill is chance to blow off steam on a bike.

"I'm not saying it's exactly like revenge of the civil servant. But it's something like that."