Beer Bike
What is Beer Bike?
One of the most anticipated events of the year, Beer Bike is preceded by Hell Week–a whole week set aside to celebrate the birthday of our founder, William Marsh Rice, and indulge in general tomfoolery. With afternoon tailgates and every evening filled with fun activities that correspond to Baker’s Beer Bike theme, Bakerites enjoy delicious food, campus-wide sponsored events, swag study breaks, movie nights, midnight “jacks” on other colleges, and so much more.
At the end of this most glorious of weeks, the entire campus is ready for the most glorious of days: Beer Bike. Named after the biking relay race that takes place that afternoon where students chug in between racers, Beer Bike draws over 4,000 students, staff, alumni, and community each year.
Red Bull, non-stop dancing, college cheers, and possibly the biggest water balloon fight in the United States (and probably the best in the world). After the fight, every college makes their way to the race track with a giant parade with crazy floats. At the race track, Bakerites show their college spirit by cheering on the Baker teams as they race against the other ten colleges (plus the Graduate Student Association).
After the three races (Alumni’s, Women’s, and Men’s), “Baker Comes First!” will be all you hear and scream as Baker celebrates the glory (but sometimes heartbreak) of Beer Bike. This concludes Beer Bike, and all Bakerites return to Baker to get some well-deserved rest as we have, yet again, proved that we are the best college at Rice. Only through experiencing this wonderful week will you truly and fully understand the epic awesomeness of Beer Bike.
Hell Car
In the 1985 Beer Bike, Baker College debuted its first ever Baker Car for the Beer Bike Parade. Donated by a Bakerite, the '70 Datsun Bluebird 1600 Coup sported an impressive paint job featuring Baker's color red. But because the aged "Datziki," as it was called, was driven only a couple times a year for Beer Bike, the car slowly started falling apart over the course of two years.
On the night before the Beer Bike Parade in 1987, a couple Bakerites realized that the car engine would not start. A young freshman named Steve Carmichael asked to give a shot at repairing the lifeless Datziki. Carmichael managed to resurrect the car within a few hours after fixing the broken clutch. But as Datziki sat abandoned in the Baker-Lovett Quad, Baker's crosscampus rival Jones decided to ruin Steve's hard work by coating it in orange paint as a pre-Beer Bike jack. The sudden facelift was not only humiliating, but intolerable to loyal Bakerites, since red has been Baker's color since inception.
As morning came around, Bakerites frantically worked to salvage the dignity of the car and their college, but the orange paint would not come off! Only Baker ingenuity could save the day. By the time the Parade began, Datziki had become a fearsome, fiery machine with flames painted on the side of the car. As Baker led the Parade with its flaming car, other colleges began a derogatory chant: "The College from Hell, the College from Hell." Although the chants were meant as insults, Bakerites shouted right back at them: "Baker! Hell yeah!" and "We're from Hell! We're from Baker!" We have since adopted the image, and Baker has since been known and respected as the college from Hell.
Unfortunately, Datziki's resurrection was short-lived. The car died in West Lot after the Parade and was subsequently flipped over and sledge-hammered by bitter Jonesians. After the Datziki's demise, Baker was in need of a new car for the next year's Beer Bike Parade. So Steve Carmichael, savior of the Datziki, took a trip down to Montrose Avenue (which used to have multiple used-car lots) in search of a new Baker Car. There, hiding in the back corner in one of the lots, sat a white '66 Pontiac Catalina that caught his attention. It was in superb shape and condition, but it was priced at only $150 for a reason: it didn't run. But Steve wasn't going to give up on the Pontiac so quickly. He asked the dealer to give him one afternoon; if he could get it running, he would pay for the car. And fix it he did, Steve drove back to Baker with a brand new car, yet to become what will be known as the first true "Hell Car".
