“If you fall off, I’ll cut you off,” warned Cline Moore, semi-jokingly to a group of bike riders who had signed up for his evening long pub-crawl around Downtown Sacramento.

It was his brief disclaimer to the modest-sized crowd on this Wednesday night, before embarking on a mobile eating and drinking event marking the end of the month-long cycling celebration – The Tour de Sacramento.

A laid-back homage to the famous race in France, the first ever Tour de Sacramento featured three weeks of neighborhood rides, bike clinics, and on this night – food, fun, and beverage.

This last stage of the tour was the natural merging of two things that Sacramento residents do well – drink and ride bikes – occasionally at the same time.

“Bikes allow us to pair [together] more restaurants that aren’t next to each other,” said Moore, a local entrepreneur and promoter extraordinaire.

He’s organized over 15 pub-crawls in Sacramento, tonight being the first on bikes. He charges $25 for registration and gets the restaurants to provide the food for free – knowing the customers he brings through their doors will buy plenty of drinks.

Moore’s tall, slender frame almost isn’t a match for his booming and commanding voice. A business minded version of a merry prankster, Moore has found a way to make a buck while having a good time.

It’s this ingenuity and flow that inspired him to organize his “Grub Crawl” idea with the Tour de Sacramento.

And he’s good at organizing. If you are out on any given evening in Sacramento, you are bound to run into him. Bike crawl participant, Tina Pruett, was at the Blue Cue club the night before, when Moore convinced her and a friend to sign up for the bike crawl.

At the ride’s starting point at Bikes & Bites on 12th street, Moore waves in his customers while barking orders to his hired help for the evening. Even Assembly Member Dave Jones stops on his walk to the capitol to see what Moore is up to this time.

About 70 people registered for the bike crawl said Moore, but about only 20 made it to the starting point. In a scattered formation, the group saddled up and took off down L Street, heading for 4th Street Grille. They turned heads and earned honks from the traffic as they hugged the curb, and were brave enough to take up the whole right lane on occasion.

At 4th Street Grille, the group sucked down their drinks and munched on an array of pulled-pork sliders and grilled chicken skewers. It was like a normal night out at the bar, except with a more eclectic and diverse group of sweaty people.

Heading towards the Fox and Goose pub, the ride got its first reminder of what the evening was billed for – to celebrate Le Tour de France. Actually, only a small subsection of the group included avid cycling fans.

Decked out in full cycling gear, 40-year-old Carmichael resident, Stacy Scranton, said she has watched every stage of the Tour de France on television, and is the only participant to make it to every event of the Tour de Sacramento.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Scranton said, “If [they] were looking to inspire one person to get into cycling, that one person would be me.”

Scranton, who said she wants to train in order to participate in longer cycling marathons, was particularly thankful of Dawn Dais – the co-organizer of Tour de Sacramento – for getting her back on her Giant OCR1 road bike.

Dais has written a book on cycling training for the average Joe, and said the Tour de Sacramento was a way to promote her work and get people thinking about riding their bikes.

“Sacramento is a really big city and bikes are great way to explore it,” said Dais, “We’re planning for something even bigger next year.”

But just as the sub-group settled into a cozy booth in the corner of the pub, Cline Moore began rousing the group again. It was time to hit the road, down R Street and on to Hangar 17.

Moore, with his ambitious attitude and self-described verbose character, sees himself as one-man stimulus package, a savior of sorts of Downtown Sacramento’s nightlife economy.

“I get my inspiration from Obama,” Moore says, “We are the leaders we are looking for. Restaurants and people are struggling; I get to bring people together.”

Local restaurants owners and managers definitely appreciate his effort.

“The pie has shrunk,” said Hangar 17 co-owner James Lombardi, “Everyone is fighting and clawing for business here; when someone brings people to your doorstep, it’s always welcome.”

A few drinks and several servings of appetizers into the evening, the bike crawl had picked up a few late-comers before making its way to its final scheduled stops for the evening – Hot Italian for gelato, and Tokyo Fro’s for sushi and free admission to its nightclub.

But as the peloton of riders made its way down 16th street, albeit sloppy by this time, the group voted on an impromptu stop at de Vere’s Irish Pub for what Moore called, “Just one shot.”

It should be mentioned that the Sacramento Police Department said it wanted to remind everyone that drunk cycling is always illegal.

“We ask that if you participate you drink responsibly, just as if you were driving," Sergeant Norm Leong said in a telephone conversation.

Nevertheless, the night rounded out without major incident. Tina Pruett was the only crawler to take a spill, sinking in an ant hill while trying to lock up her bike. She also got a flat tire, but luckily, fellow rider Karl Alexander – who used to give guided mountain bike tours through Costa Rican jungles – grabbed a spare tube from his apartment around the corner.

It was just the kind of interaction between two people who were previously strangers Moore would have loved to see.

But he was busy inside working the crowd and promoting his next big idea.

Eventually, Moore says he would like to expand the crawl idea to Denver and San Francisco, but remains busy building his reputation in this town.

“If Sacramento offered this on a regular basis,” Moore said, “We could be the friendliest city. We could own that moniker.”