When San Benito High sophomore-to-be and softball standout Lizzy
Gatto isn’t driving runs across the plate with her potent swing,
you might find her practicing eating a hot dog suspended from a
string as she rides underneath it on the back of a motorcycle.
Hollister – When San Benito High sophomore-to-be and softball standout Lizzy Gatto isn’t driving runs across the plate with her potent swing, you might find her practicing eating a hot dog suspended from a string as she rides underneath it on the back of a motorcycle.
Talk about a two-sport athlete. This event – one of the light-hearted biker games at Sunday’s Hollister Independence Rally – takes more skill than you might imagine.
As do all of the events at the Bike Games. When it comes down to it, it’s all about having fun on two wheels. The contestants aren’t professionals like the daredevil crew that performs the Wall of Death show, just regular bikers in town for the Rally competing in events like the weenie bite, the slo-slalom, the slo race and the joust.
“All of these competitions are really fun,” said Ace Enderlin, who, along with his wife Linda, took first in the weenie bite and second in the joust. “I just like playing around on the bike. It’s pretty competitive but it’s not so competitive that anybody gets all broken up if they lose. Every day is a new day.”
The last two times Lizzy and Bobcat Gatto entered the weenie bite contest, they failed to place. But, on Sunday at the Old Fremont School’s blacktop, the Hollister duo had their technique down. Bobcat kept the bike slow and steady and Lizzy had no trouble gnawing a big chunk of mustard-covered hot dog off of the line.
“You get going, try to stay steady and then when you get to the hot dog, you try to stop for a second,” said Bobcat after the event. ” You try to pause so you can let her get up and get the hot dog.”
Lizzy’s technique was a bit simpler, she was just doing her best to keep from getting mustard all over her face.
The event’s winner is determined by who gets the biggest bite and, after Lizzy chomped more than half the dog on her and Bobcat’s run, the Gattos looked to be in line for a first-place finish.
Several teams attempted to compete following the Gattos’ successful run and most failed to get even a small bite of the dog as their motorcycle crept under the line. But when Linda Enderlin, riding on the back of her husband Ace’s Harley, got a bite that looked to be about equal with that of the Gatto’s, the event’s judges had to go to the tape measure to determine a winner.
The result: The Enderlins got just enough to be crowned champions of this year’s weenie bite, leaving the Gattos with second and Hector and Laura Anaya in third.
In the joust competition, where contestants slowly ride past a series of cones with rings on them and attempt to retrieve the rings with a fishing pole in a modern-era version of the old renaissance game, using gas-fed iron horses as opposed to grass-fed animals. Hollister’s Dennis and Peggy Osorio took first with four rings lanced, followed by the Anayas in second and the Enderlins in third.
76-year old Mel Toste has been competing in the Bike Games at the Hollister Independence Rally for six years now and he always finishes high in at least one event riding his beautiful 1958 BMW R26.
Toste mastered the slo-slalom course, where riders weave inside and outside of a series of evenly spaced cones without putting a foot on the ground, on his BMW for a first place finish ahead of Stephen Hill in second and Frog Reynolds in third. Toste also took home a second place in the slo-race, where the slowest rider to the finish line without putting a foot down on the ground wins.
“There are a lot of good people here, it’s tough to beat these kinds of folks,” said Toste. “They always do a good job with the rally and the Bike Games and I have a lot of fun. I just wish they could make these games an all-day event.”
