Tour de Fat 2008 Report

Welcome to the TDF 2008!

Saturday was New Belgium‘s traveling show, the Tour de Fat. Many of us in Carson City made the pilgrimage to Truckee, California for this annual event.

Chip preparing for the Bike Parade

The event always starts off with a bike parade, but this year’s route was quite a bit different. I think last year’s rowdy ride caused too many problems in downtown Truckee, and probably wasn’t the safest route. This year we had help from law enforcement, blocking traffic so that the parade had a whole lane to themselves going down the main road into Truckee! We stuck to the back roads for the most part though, and this was fine with me. I like keeping my son out of traffic.

TDF Main Stage

The food choices were more limited this year, and if you were a vegetarian, it was cheese pizza for you. The beer choices were pretty good though, and featured New Belgium’s Blue Paddle, Skinny Dip, Mothership Wit, and of course Fat Tire Ale. This lineup was missing some of my favorites, but represented some of the best of their summer brews. All were delicious!

Kristy on the Big Wheel

The shows and music were entertaining, but I missed the circus acts from last year. That’s ok though.  Since it’s fresh and different each year, you never know what to expect.

Back again this year were the Sprockettes, a dance group of young ladies from Portland, traveling the west coast in their bus that runs on veggie oil! They put on a good show and incorporate many bicycles into their routine.

Scott R tries to impress the Sprockettes with his footlong

Like I said, there were many folks from Carson City up there, and I tried to get photos of them when I had the opportunity. Especially the more “colorful” characters.

Mickey the Used Bicycle Salesman and Josh

Christine and Ryan in lovely camisoles

One of the favorite things to at the Tour de Fat is to ride the Freak Bikes. Gone are some of the tall bikes from year’s past, but they’ve been replaced with plenty of other oddities. It’s unknown where the other bikes went. Were they unsafe and pulled, or did they just fall apart? Probably a little of both!

Josh on the Big Wheel – Peace Out

Kristy and Charlie riding at Their Own Risk

There was a good market place setup where you could buy anything from a hat, t-shirt, bicycle tire belt, to a sweet Joe Dirt mullet wig.

Charlie or a young Joe Dirt?

There is much fun to be had at the Tour de Fat, but there is also a message behind the event. Being less wasteful and riding your bicycle were common themes everywhere you looked. They a had booth setup where you could pledge to ride your bike to work, and had a “compost office” setup where all waste from the event was recycled. There were no “trash” cans.

Escalade Funeral

The only big downer about the Tour de Fat, is that it’s almost an hour’s drive from Carson City! Wouldn’t it be cool if something big like this came to our town? If you say YES, then you’ll be excited to hear what I have to announce early this week! Stay tuned…

The Sprockettes

I’ll leave you with a couple videos of the Sprockettes.

The rest of the TDF photset can be viewed on Flickr HERE.