Winter Bike Expo 2011

The great folks at Freewheel Bike put on an excellent show this weekend. They had some great sales and a huge amount of bikes for sale. I even got to meet a Moon Lander in person. I'm really hoping I will get the one I ordered. Mark and I rolled down to the show early (on Fat Bikes) to catch our beloved friend Mr Pramann (aka the Legend) doing a presentation on winter racing. He covered the history and evolution of the snow bike as well as his experiences racing in Alaska and The Arrowhead 135. I thought it was very well done and enjoyed it thoroughly. Well done Dave. Several others gave presentations but we were not able to stay for those as we had a trip to Chipotle in our future. It took well over an hour to get on our way as we had to check out the back room which was a Fat Bike heaven. The room was  filled with bikes, tires, frames and other winter goodies, as well as lots of friends and acquaintances.

"The Legend"

That's a real fire

Post race hyration

Behold

Later in the evening the best part of the show would commence at 6pm. The Fat-Bike Trench Crit. Not sure where the trench part comes from but it makes it sound really cool. Lynn and I rolled in from the the Light Rail to the east. It was snowing and made for a really cool, but short,  ride. The entry fee into the race was supposed to be a six pack of beer or some hot dogs. I forgot about it until the last minute: the SA we stopped at had no hot dogs so I brought a box of Popsicles instead. The course was sweet, they had some twisty turns, a jump, some board walk thingys, a skinny and some steep off camber climbs under several bridges and Santa was there too! I think about 12 of us started, with around 50 onlookers cheering as we made our way around the course. It was fun as hell and hurt just as much. When I do any race I go all out, and this would be no exception. The new snow was quite slick as I found myself eating shit in one of the first fast corners about 30 seconds into the race. I picked myself up and motored on without any other incidents to third place. After the race Lynn and I hung out a talked with friends for a couple hours before riding back to the train. If you missed this, you definitely missed a great time. PS. I heard a rumor the crit will be back in Feb.