The making of a poster for a decades-old, secret race

By Stephen Haynes

Plagued by the memories of my first Punk Bike Enduro experience last year, I felt compelled to produce a poster that captured both the spirit of the event and my own nightmarish recollections. If you’re not familiar, Punk Bike is a race event held every year near Pittsburgh that combines speed, skill, and standing around in the freezing cold woods drinking beer.

First, some haphazard, drunken sketches were scribbled:

Which leads to a more refined drunken sketch.

Of course sketches don’t stay sketches for long, eventually they grow up and become inked drawings ready to be scanned and colored. Or mocked, ridiculed and trashed in a rash, drunken tirade…

Alas, this drawing did not fall victim to such a tirade and made it safely from the scanner into the magical coloring what’s-it where upon a color mockup was spit out, complete with text!

At this point I began to mash the keyboard with both hands until I got confirmation that my file has been received by the Screen Burning Gnomes. Imagine Oompa Loompas, but with screen printing supplies.

Once received, the SPG’s take my files and transfer them to screens by way of secretive “exposure” process. I have no idea what this means but I’m almost positive it involves the SPG’s disrobing and giving the screens a full-frontal view of what I can only imagine is a glorious sight…

After the screens have been secured and proper dues paid to the SPG’s, I set to work on printing. The ability to multi-task is important. Especially when your counterweight system breaks and you’re forced to use your head to hold up the screen between pulls of the squeegee.

Wash, rinse, repeat until the stack of paper goes away.

First color down.

Miraculously, the second color simply appeared.

The third color was a stubborn prick and refused to simply show up like the second color.

Mustache Dave sleeping with his eyes open as I regaled him with stories of Eamos Stoutbarrel, my 2nd level Dwarf Fighter from my bi-weekly D&D game.

Finally, the culmination of weeks spent procrastinating. The 2011 Punk Bike Enduro poster. Top 3 finishers in each category of this year’s race will receive a copy, dutifully signed and numbered by this poor schmuck. See you Sunday.

Haynes is the art director at our sister magazine, Bicycle Times and a frequent Dirt Rag contributer.