Tour de Fat 2009

After a monstrous two days, I threw stuff in a bag, secured Ruby to the trunk rack and drove south to Fort Collins, Colo.: home of Colorado State University, my sister Sam, my friend Stefanie and the New Belgium Brewery.

The brewery (responsible for the Fat Tire and Sunshine Wheat brews) sponsors bike rides — Tour de Fat — in several cities to raise awareness and money for transport by bicycle. The ride ends with a show, vendors and Fat Tire beer. Costumes/crazy clothes are required: “Come in your favorite alter ego, because when everybody’s weird, no one is.”

me and Stefanie post-Tour

Sam, her friend Annie and I rode a few miles to the start and joined the parade with 12,000 other college kids, retired folks and families. The route winds 2.8 miles through Fort Collins, but it’s not a race. At one point I almost fell over because we were moving so slow. Tall bikes, short bikes, tandem bikes, septacycles… we saw it all.

The sumo wrestler was very popular.

Afterward, our legs ached and our butts were numb, so we headed to the swimbeach at the Horsetooth Reservoir for some R&R. I left Sunday and because there weren’t any major incidents over the weekend (yay cop duty!) I fit in some hiking. The holiday weekend closed out on a high note with today’s float trip.  More on that later.

Here’s a video from last year’s Tour de Fat: