Friday, February 25, 2011

Beer Friday

Oh and that rock floating in the beer? My iPhone has just started added that to all my photos. I guess it's time for a new phone...

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Fatback Fever

I know it's nearing the end of the snow biking season but I've started the wheels in motion to join the fat bike club. It turns out there is a local shop that carries the Fatback and when I stopped in yesterday to chat them up, I left with a demo bike to try out. I had been surveying the fat bike landscape, asking questions of one of Alaska's hard core snow bikers and the trail was leading to the Fatback offered by Speedway Cycles in Anchorage Alaska.

It's one thing to have people rave about a particular bike but quite another to get out on it and see for yourself. I was expecting a nice bike and wasn't at all disappointed but didn't quite understand how nice this bike really is. After easily rolling over a bunch of (presumably unridable) snow piles at the local school and some impromptu singletrack where dog walkers had beat a path through a little wooded chunk of no man's land, I decided to head for home. There aren't a lot of hills in my neighborhood but there are a few short ones and heading up one I was mentally preparing for the slog up it. The bike didn't have clip less pedals and I had been too lazy to swap them out so I was expecting hill would be even more challenging with half my pedal stroke unavailable to me.

Turns out the bike is quite the snappy climber and I was cresting the hill still waiting for the hard part to start.

With the fever raging there was only one thing to do: take action to get my own Fatback. It will take a while to pull all the pieces together and I may end up missing this snow biking season but boy will I be ready next year!