Take a sport that is by nature hard, make it more painful by removing the things that make it easier, then add your favourite homo-erotic fantasy and you have singlespeeding. Don’t forget the beer, because you’re going to need that Dutch courage to ride a bike in a tutu.

To race a bicycle around Mount Victoria is never a walk in the park, which is probably why there are so many walkers up there. The ones taking their constitutional this morning may have wondered what they’d stumbled upon, as rider after rider struggled to keep bikes in motion and outfits intact as safety pins and tape fought to avoid the type of wardrobe malfunction that no-one needs to witness.

Pushing your bike rather than riding it comes with the territory. The organisers Huttcross, some of the most twisted individuals in a sea of their ilk, made sure the territory was steep and difficult to ride both up and down.

The new MIPS Capotain Hat was spotted in the wild.

Loneliness is the domain of the singlespeeder, both on and off the bike.

Like a ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch, the ChainSlap cameras were on the scene when the racing was all but done, and the drinking about to start. It’s all part of the schtick, but we draw the line at a leopard print leotard. leopard print anything really, except leopards.

Not everyone got into the spirit of fancy dress and rode in their usual street attire.

There’s always a strong police presence at singlespeed races, invariably causing the most trouble and violating several public decency laws.

Kids: the original singlespeeders by default.

If you always wanted to be a cop or in the Village People, just take the gears off your bike and wait.

The dog to tutu ratio was close, but it was easier to look at the dogs, who found it hard to look at the tutus.

Fine threads, fine brew, GCs, good times.

Where there’s beer and bikes…

Coming closest to full nudity was the double-take inducing skinsuit of current World Champ Tadeas Mejdr who added the much more prestigious NZSS title to his tat collection. A distinct lack of Borats was not unwelcome, and the children were generally safe from recurring nightmares for the next week.

Brenda “Bob” Clapp gets the first and last celebratory beer from her soigneur before she was made designated driver for the party later that night.

Bob earned her third NZSS champ’s tattoo while sporting a fetching crocheted blanket ensemble, never an easy one to pull off but a look that is not even remotely awkward in Nelson.

And the Parrot Dog did flow well into the night where the incoherent and imbalanced dissipated across a city that offered no more. A heated beer pong battle decided that a place with an open cut mine shall host the gathering of misfits in 2018, and with no idea of how it shall be accomplished the confidence is high that it will be another event to try to remember.