Are you ready to rally?
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The sun is setting outside the Pyramid Café, but things are just beginning to heat up inside the strip-mall restaurant on Cordova Road. The dinner crowd is getting larger, the music is getting louder and the belly dancers are just starting to click-click-click their finger cymbals as they sashay around the room.
A large group sits around a plastic table set up on the sidewalk outside. Some sip tea, others beer. They talk and laugh in between cigarette drags and bites of gyro and fries.
Yaseen Archuleta casually calls this the "Muzzy get-together," a gathering of young people-many of them Muslim-that assemble at the Pyramid Café on Thursday nights to eat dinner, watch the belly dancing and hang out.
But the hot topic of conversation these days isn't gyrating mid-sections or toasted falafels.
It's the Rally Del Norte.
About five years ago, Archuleta and some friends were sitting around on Easter weekend with nothing to do. Many grew up in the small collection of Muslim families that live in and around Abiquiu and thus had never celebrated the holiday. So they decided to have a celebration of their own.
"A lot of us either didn't celebrate Easter or didn't have family in town," Archuleta says. "So we said, 'Hey, we should do an Easter egg hunt,' and that eventually turned into a scavenger hunt."
What began as a playful way to pass a few hours on Easter weekend among a few friends eventually evolved into the Rally Del Norte.
The rally-which kicks off its inaugural run on July 1-isn't your average backyard scavenger hunt. The race begins in Santa Fe and travels some 255 miles through northern New Mexico, up into southern Colorado and back down to the finish line in El Rito.
Along the way, teams earn points for collecting a wide variety of New Mexico items, including an adobe brick (50 points), tumbleweed (100) and the largest single green chile (150) as well as things like a picture of the entire team inside a phone booth (50).
"We try to make it so that people don't get into too much trouble," Colin Moffitt-another rally organizer and childhood friend, says. "Then again, we're giving out 300 points to the person with the most expensive speeding ticket."
Although many of the rally's organizers and team members already signed up have Muslim faith in common, the Rally Del Norte is anything but insular. "We all grew up together, so the majority of the people involved are Muslim," 28-year-old Samia van Hattum says. "But we also have people who we grew up with or went to school with who aren't Muslim that have been included into the clan, so to speak."
To spread the word outside the clan, Archuleta and others have been papering Santa Fe with flyers and created a Web site (
) to open the race up.
"We don't really care so much if we know you or if you're a good friend," Lutz says. "It's going to be a fun event and we'd be more than happy to have anyone who thinks this sounds interesting and fun come out and participate. The more, the merrier."
Archuleta says 15 teams have already signed up and more are expected. Teams will compete for cash prizes and a homemade trophy, all for a $10 entry fee that will buy refreshments for the awards ceremony and party to be held after the race.
"It may be small to start with or it may be a huge, smashing success," van Hattum says. "They're a determined group of boys. Big or small, they'll make it happen."
