Tour de Fat

Just finished riding in the Tour de Fat. It was awesome!

I got confused initially and thought that the ride started at 9:00 AM instead of 10:00 AM so I got there at around 8:00 AM to register, and I was WAY TOO EARLY. So I turned around, went back to Einstein Bros and got a bagel for my girlfriend, who was still in bed, and went back home.

I was a bit nervous initially because it was spitting rain, and I could hear very distant thunder, but it ended up not raining. It was just cool and cloudy during the ride.




Tour de Fat highlights!

• Large group ride! Riding your bike is often such a solitary act. It's really neat to be a part of large group rides like this, or like Critical Mass, and meet and see other people on their bikes and chat 'em up.


• Tall bikes. There were a lot of tall bikes! Most of the Ride Wardens (or whatever they were called) were on tall bikes, presumably so they could both easily survey the crowd and be easily seen. There was one tall tandem bike, which was pretty wicked cool. And there was one MEGA tall bike. This was no two-frames-welded-together bike. It was a custom built job, and it was at least a fully story tall.


• Other bikes. There were tons of gnarly cruisers, and other bikes. I was ogling them all. Hard.


• Riding past the Health Care demonstration at the state capitol! People were hooting and hollering! Both in favor of reform, and against Obama. (I don't think many of them were anti-reform, as much as they were anti-Obama.) I yelled back at them as I rode by, "Health! Care! Now!" and I heard some protester comment, in a derogatory fashion, in reference to all of us on two wheels, " ... They look like Obama people."


• Stopped at a red light, some guy looked out his window and saw hundreds of bikes filling the road outside his basement window, and hollered out through the screen, "What are you doing?" I answered, "We're riding bikes."


• Costumes! Both bikes and riders were all dressed up. There plenty of girls in tights and tutus and butterfly wings. What is that costume supposed to be? A slutty butterfly ballerina? There were also a couple folks dressed up like Waldo. Each time I saw one, it was fun to point and yell out, "THERE HE IS!"