Faster than a jet plane — that would be the bicyclists of Wolfpack Hustle.
Six bicyclists from the group, a loose collective of L.A. cyclists, were trying to see if they could beat a passenger on a JetBlue flight from Burbank to Long Beach, and they succeeded by a wide margin,the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
The "Carmageddon" challenge was born after JetBlue offered $4 plane rides from Burbank to Long Beach to get around the weekend closure of Interstate 405 in the northern part of the metropolitan area. An online article in Slate helped the challenge take shape.
The bicyclists and a blogger left a North Hollywood intersection at 10:50 a.m. The blogger had to drive to the airport for a 12:20 p.m. flight, then get a ride to the finish line at the Long Beach aquarium.
The cyclists took a route along the Los Angeles River, the Times reported, and made it in one hour and 34 minutes. They arrived at the finish just as the JetBlue flight was taking off — a victory for bicyclists trying to get fellow Los Angelenos to get out of the car once in a while to get some exercise on their commute.
Tom Vanderbilt, who wrote the original Slate piece, reported Saturday that bicyclists weren't the only ones to beat Flight 405. Vanderbilt said that an entrant who took only public transit also got to the finish well before the flying blogger and that a rollerskater purportedly did too.
The JetBlue fliers also tweeted that their cab driver in Long Beach got lost.