 "Photo: Trent Barnes")
The Tour de Tech Terrace, a 10-mile bicycle ride through the Tech Terrace neighborhood organized by both Texas Tech students and alumni, convened for the seventh ride Saturday, when roughly 400 bicycle enthusiasts came together for the once-per-semester event.
According to the Web site www.tourdetechterrace.com, the tour was founded in the summer of 2004 by Tech students Omar Abotteen and Aaron Blom as a way for students to ride bikes, socialize at nearby houses and mingle. The tour eventually expanded into a bi-annual event. Blom, now a Tech graduate and Dallas resident, said he came back to Lubbock to support the tour this semester and was pleased with the progression of the event.
"The tour's changed a lot over the years, (but) the essence is still there," he said. "The first tour we did we had about 30 people ride. It was a real small, close group of friends; it doubled every time since then, keeping steady at 300 since then."
One of the major progressions of the event, which has grown with the increasing number of riders, is the accumulation of a canned-food drive now associated with the tour. Blom said the donation of canned foods to charitable organizations was an intuitive procession.
"We figured if we were going to be getting a large group of people together, like we do to have fun, it's not very hard to ask people to bring canned goods," he said. "It turns the tour into a charity event."
Jake Schwierking, a physics graduate student from Austin, has been with the Tour since its inception, and said his favorite thing about the event is people who are new to the experience.
"Virgin riders - it's what it's all about," he said. "Everyone that's been in it tries their best to get here, but the best is when someone just gets the story and says, 'that sounds pretty fun,' and seeing the look on their face."
The tour, which features a stop every mile during the 10-mile route for participants to consume alcohol, also has changed its policy on alcohol supply and distribution.
According to the tour's Web site, a $10 fee originally was collected to pay for the beer provided at the stops, but there was no charge for riding the tour or bringing one's own beverages. Recently, the tour has done away with sponsoring houses for beer, as participants now bring their own beverages.
Eric Mathis, an applied linguistics graduate student from Seminole who participated in his second tour, said the tour gives bicycle riders a chance to feel embraced and accredited.
"Normally, we only get a small portion of the road because motorists push us out of the small lane we're allotted," he said. "People get a chance to have a scenario where the majority of people on the road are cyclists."
Schwierking said the appeal of the tour lays in the ability participants have to engage in conversation with a wide variety of personalities brought together by a common interest.
"It's a great way to meet a lot of like-minded people that are totally different - it spans all the cliques," he said. "Here at the tour, everybody's a rider. I think that's the common thing that brings people together."
Schwierking said there was an official count of 386 people in attendance at the midway point of the ride.
Co-founder Blom said he is encouraged by the progress of the tour, and the future of the event lies within the current riders keeping the tradition alive and well through the absence and passage of riders.
"We've got good people still working on it," he said. A lot of people are graduating and moving on, so we're going to be looking for some more people to fill the shoes and get the thing organized, keep it going."
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