photo credit: Bill Vitali
Everyone who owns a fatbike, or who has considered purchasing one has a “fatbike story”. Basically, it’s the tale of why you’ve chosen to ride a fatbike, what you use it for, what kinds of adventures you may have explored by fatbike that you wouldn’t have done otherwise, or what you have in store for the future with your fatbike.
While RideFatbikes.com has shared some of our own fatbike stories, and some race and ride reports from others, we want to hear your fatbike story. Maybe you’d like to tell the Ride Fatbikes readers about your favorite ride, trail or race. Perhaps you just bought a fatbike and want to share your enthusiasm about the new cycling adventures you’ve planned. Contact us with your own personal fatbike story (include photos if you’d like) and we’ll try to post it here at RideFatbikes.com.
Fatbike riders have stories to tell… what’s yours?
I have a pugsley and I ride the bejesus out of it. But that is not the fat bike I want to talk about. I just finished a fat front karate monkey. At the shop I work at we have all started calling it the adventure monkey. I built it with only one goal: to go on adventures, any place, any time. For now, it is a single speed, but it will soon be a 1×10, maybe with drop bars. I took it for its first adventure today, it wasn’t anything major, just a short ride on my local rails trail. At least it started that way. I just left my house and headed to the trail where I went south, which is a little odd for me, after a few miles I came across the “wash out”, a section of trail, that thanks to poor design by the city and Walmart, gets all the run off from a huge parking lot ( supposedly they are fixing it). The wash out has rocks from tiny gravel to basket ball sized chunks of concrete, normally you have to walk it, but not today. I attacked it with all I had, it did not end well, but I made it farther then normal. I next rode out to my bosses house and played frisbee with his border collie, then back on the trail to nowhere. I decided to check out the bmx jumps off the trail a short while later, i got a little air. Then onto the nichols bakery, the smells coming out of the place rivaled all the scents of fall. On the return trip i headed a few miles past my normal turn off just to cross a little stream. It turned out the stream was slightly flooded and i got my shoes a little more wet then planned. Which was all part of the adventure. After what was supposed to be a short ride, a shake down cruise really, I returned home, bloody knee, torn glove, wet shoes and a huge smile in my face, 4 hours and nearly 36 miles later. What is the point? We all need to ride more, and more importantly we need to ride in new places, or old places in new ways.