This past weekend was the annual FIBArk festival.
The 75th anniversary no less. And while the festival is a major event on the calendar of serious river rats like pro kayakers, freestyle kayakers, hardcore down-river rafters and stand-up paddle borders, it’s a four-day affair with enough music, fried food and serious goofiness to keep everyone entertained.
We’d seen the pros do their thing at previous years’ events. This year, we wanted to see something lighter, something decidedly less pro. The Hooligan Race is just the ticket. Not so much a race as an exhibition. As someone — maybe it was the announcer — said, it’s about unseaworthy craft being piloted by an unqualified crew in an attempt to entertain the crowd and collect money.
The Hooligan Race is open to anything that floats that’s not a boat. Hooligans dress up in costume and the winner is chosen by crowd support. To make things interesting they string a rope high across the river and hang envelopes of money from it for the hooligans to grab as they float, spin and/or paddle by. And if they capsize, which is sort of a 50/50 proposition with these things, all the more entertaining.
Here’s a short video of this year’s shenanigans.
After a year hiatus, this year they brought back the non-river events including the 10K trail run and mountain bike race and they added a skateboard competition.
As best as my bike-centric brain can tell, a 10K trail run is a mountain bike race without the bikes.
Of course, when it comes to a mountain bike race, I still can’t resist. Especially a local one run on the trails I ride every day. They’ve sort of become my group rides. This year they offered up a 12-mile and a 24-mile race. I entered the 24-mile race because hey, twice the miles, same price? What a deal!
The race started on a Jeep road along the river and ran in a loop covering trails in the Arkansas Hills side of town. Like every other race I’ve done around here it was a mass start. Young, old, male, female, fast, slow, everyone goes off together. This has been a learning for me personally. To keep from blowing up in the first mile I’ve had to learn not to blast off the line with the 20-year-olds. The key is to purposely line up no closer to the front than the second row.
I had a good race, felt strong, no crashes. And I managed to finish good enough to stand on the podium next to local legend and fellow old guy, Shawn Gillis. All around, a good day.
