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Dave's summary

Well I was going to do a great write-up, but Casey beat me to it. All I can add is that it was nice and relaxing hanging out at the start eating cookies until everyone showed up. Here's what it looked like before the chaos started...

Casey's writeup

Pittsburgh’s First Annual Pirate Bike Triathlon is complete! The Burgh has never seen a finer Labor Day, mid 80’s and sunny, chock full of decked out bikers screaming “AARGH!”

More than 80 people registered with us at the starting point on Flagstaff Hill. Even more families and friends showed up at the end to show moral support—and eat all the tasty food donated by our friends at Allegro Hearth and Dave and Andy’s.

With 5 checkpoints across the city, our pirates had to rush to buy/barter/negotiate the materials they needed to build the ship of their dreams. And with VERY limited materials the checkpoints were cleared out almost immediately.

The riders made their way back to the riverfront park along the Monongahela River, to trade in coupons for 55 gallon drums and wooden pallets and to begin construction. The original rules were to build a vessel to keep your head, chest and crotch from getting wet… and to make it stylish. 2 hours after the start boats were lined up and ready to launch. The Mellon Street White Boys who became known as “team lobster” won the style contest hands down. Our team of expert judges handed them their prize and we were off.

The barrels may have had a little bit of punch in them

Rules were quickly forgotten as ships quickly sank and the water turned red (from the fruit punch spilling out of the drums). Teams rushed to get back out of the water and run for their treasure chests. They knew they had to scramble to raise their flag the highest to win. At this point our cameraman had to walk the plank, so our documentation suffered.

Teams erected very tall poles, climbed trees, and climbed trees with very tall poles… the latter left us with one true winner: The Polish Hill Stranglers. Second and Third were very close calls with Team Lobster and Team Yeti reaching out to the very tippy tops of the branches... and our team of expert judges had to make some tough calls with the rest of our flags—seeing as how our measuring tape didn’t go quite that far.

Overall an extremely successful event, raising more than $500 for the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh. Our fellow pirates, Eric and Erin, braved injuries with smiles and courage.

So the winners are…..

Polish Hill Stranglers: Born to Run, Chris Cornbread, Steve, Joe
Mellon St. White boys/lobster: Rush, Chris, Courtney, Gabby, and Eric
Team Yeti: Nick, Hallie, Linda and Mark
Robin’s Team: Scott, Robin, and Jeff
Rainwater Kool-Aid: Lauren, Brian, Amy

The rest of the teams were so close, we ended up just giving them all prizes. Everyone did an amazing job!!!

Team MCG
Team Void- suffered the loss of Eric’s shoulder falling out of it’s socket during the tree climbing
Team Clown Bears on Tiny Balls wearing Silly Hats- Finished their raft first
Team Yarrrgh- the largest team with 9 members registered
Team Beard- Ken did manage to score the only paddles for his team by bringing us more than 6 gallons of water!
Erok’s team- erok managed to score all the 55 gallon drums at the end of the race
Team Knife Fight- Created the Maxi-pad raft and almost convinced a random kayaker to pull them upstream
Team Death Fuck- Who destroyed the rafting section with their "pool raft/styrofoam" low rider
The Pillaging Pegleg Pirates
Team Red Velvet- lost cupcake erin to a nasty car and kindly escorted her to the hospital where everything checked out ok
Team Clave- (formerly howley hell) gave all of their rafting supplies away so they could just chill with us and help clean up!
Team Howly Hell- got here before steev-o, amy and gary… so they got your name… hehe
Team no name!! with Brian and friends showed up the day of with no plan and did just fine!
Team Cosmonauts