the first time the BMA hosted a fun ride, and what better time than now to share a recap and results! There were lots of moving parts, and a lot of planning that went into making this summer event possible.

To kick off the 2025 summer event, the BMA curated an evening at east river bar , showing the feature film, Die Hard With Vengeance (1995), and drawing raffle tickets for winners, earning prizes such as art from Mikey quackenboss, tuneups and merchandise from two seas, and king kog, herb from Gotham express, a limited edition slow squad intl quilt, delicious goodies from sweet tooth nyc, Cat Six Soaps and Brooklyn holistic for the positive scented cleaning products made by messengers, $125 gift certificates from Thomson, amongst other prizes. We had eleven teams of four pre-register, with more to come the next day of the event. We also managed to provide shirts to our participants made by mibk silkscreeners with designs by Raisa and Coco.

Thank you to everyone that came to the pre-event, watched, partied, and dropped money to prepare the next day of festivities!

The week leading up to the event, the BMA placed several items in paper bags stashed throughout the city, marked as “bombs” on a google map list. A QR code on the manifest granted access to the list. As teams collected “bombs”, participants marked them off the list.

Saturday 11AM at Verdi Square, registered teams checked in, blessed by Principles, with coffee graciously provided at the start. Upon finishing caffeinated hydration, riders began by searching for Manhattan’s final pay phone booths to find the number where Die Hard lead terrorist, Simon, could be reached. Simon revealed the manifest pick up location via phone call message. With the manifest in hand, the hunt to defuse Simon’s “bombs” was underway. Each checkpoint was considered “a bomb”, where a task had to be completed within the time allotted. If successful the team received 500 points, failure to complete the task on time resulted in half the points, no attempt was a loss of 250 points from the overall score. In anticipation of completing tasks and riding throughout the city, locating and “diffusing bombs” ie sealed paper bags containing stickers from our sponsors Strategy was key to complete all the challenges.

Uptown had riders conquer a hill within the time limit, while the upper east side, at the kryptonite checkpoint, riders attempted to beat the clock at quick lock.

Moving south, the pier 76 checkpoint, teams tested their knowledge in geography as they had three tries to locate Iran on a map. In Kips Bay, at the thomson checkpoint racers had to switch handlebars from one stem to another in order to “defuse” the bomb. At Chelsea Park & Pier 40, racers had to jump off the saddle and run a lap. In Soho racers mess life skills were put to the test at the Manhattan Portage Bags checkpoint. Racers had to load up Manhattan Portage’s monster “Empire XXL Bag” with a traffic cone and beach ball, sprint one block down and loop back within a minute, TRIPLE RUSH! Before leaving the city, teams went to Tompkins under the impression they had to weigh a specific equal amount of liquid between two containers, but instead had to solve the color combos within water to achieve a specific color.

Once riders made their way into Brooklyn, each entire team had to participate in a relay race at McCarren park. The twoseas checkpoint, a tire toss onto traffic cones had to be completed within 30 seconds, a lot harder than it looked! The king kog checkpoint had riders deflating their tires and filling them up with lightning speed. Off the pier at Transmitter park, the knog checkpoint, riders were given a flashback to a Die Hard 1 moment; instead of walking on glass, participants had to remove their shoes and walk on lego bricks to get to their bike and attach a Knog light to the bike at the end! Crossing into Queens at the middle of the Pulaski bridge, racers had to choose and commit to a haircut with “Right Down the Middle” cut awarded them +300 points. At Murray playground racers had to put those water guns to the test and shoot cans off a ledge.

Before finally heading to the finish, the bma bought pizza and refreshing beverages for all teams and volunteers at the end, but the event wasn’t over yet.

The two teams with the most points competed in a finale showdown, each team packing waterguns and balloons in the midst of capture-the-flag. The team to get the most points wins, with one select messenger having paid flight tickets to compete in 2025’s CMWC, in Sydney, Australia. The winner of Ride Hard, Dane, of the Spinning Simons with the second team with most points earning 14,095 points. The winning team of Ride Hard: The Detonators, achieving 16,365 points.

Results -

🥇The Detonators 16,365

🥈The Spinning Simons 14,095

🥉 TO4TS 13,990

4th deadfuckinglast 13,920

5th Constipation Pricing 13,503

6th Yippie Ki Yay.mfs 12,700

7th Kraftwerk_nyc 12,110

8th Pur0sinc0rte 11,375

9th Soggy S0les 8,875

10th Chainsmokers 8,595

11th 2 Wheeled Terrorists 8,285

12th handlebar hotties DQ’D

13th Bad Pony 7,410

14th Hard 2 Kill ???