The Family

6 comments

1. oh, and fyi .. Tour de Fat is going to be in Austin on October 20th.

2. Too bad we don’t have any bikes.

   And I’d like to say that the monster bike, while it does look very interesting, looks like it would be .. difficult to petal up hill. But I’ll bet you could run down pedestrians really well!

3. Kevin reported that it was rather hard to steer – it just wants to go straight. But it was still his favorite out of the ones he rode.

   The bike pit seems to travel to all the Tour de Fat locations – would be fun to go just for that. There were at least 10 different custom bikes in there, all radically different. The one I was most interested in was a regular bike set at a 45 degree slant, with a third wheel at the triangle point to keep the thing from falling down, and a shoulder support built up there so you rode the whole thing leaning at a 45 degree angle to the road. Bizarre.

4. Such fun. 🙂

   I liked all the creative bikes, but for some reason the monster may be my favorite. It must be hard to ride, to peddle and especially to steer, but it looked so much like the monster trucks with their ridiculously large tires, and i imagine those large tires are just about as useful.

   Luke pointed out that the bike with a curve of tires had chains. Did all the tires turn???

   And the third one that caught my eye was the one with the tires made of shoes. I think that one would be hard to ride as well, but it was funny and i liked it.

5. Shoe bike was a rough ride; very bouncy. Kevin said the trick was to keep pedaling at a constant cadence, any change in rate accentuated the jerkiness of the ride.

   Yes, all the wheels on the wheel bike turned – you can see they’re all connected to each other & eventually to the rear wheel, so after pedaling for about 5 seconds they’d all be rolling. The funniest – and almost dangerous – thing about that bike was getting off. ‘Real’ bicyclists mount & dismount by swinging their leg over the back of the bike. When you get on the wheel bike, you are entering into this new experience and are generally paying attention to how to get on. But when you get off, you’re just getting off; focused on the next bike .. every person I saw dismounted by swinging their leg over the back. Funniest thing. Most people just lightly kicked their foot, realized immediately what was wrong, and then focused on getting off this particular bike. One guy, though, dismounted with enthusiasm, and when he missed the first time it didn’t connect; his brain just told him to kick higher (maybe he hits the tire often in real life). So he swept his leg up really high and over, with lots of momentum … turns out, that bike is sort of top heavy. Who’d have thunk it? So, he’s thrown his own center of balance off, he’s just hauled off & kicked this top heavy bike .. a bike he’s already holding at a slight angle for the dismount … someone in the pit reached him and caught the bike, but if they hadn’t the bike would have gone down, and with it being so tall, there were a couple of people it would have taken down with it.

   But disaster was averted, so it was just a funny show.

   There were lots of other creative bikes …wish Kevin had ridden all of them, just so you could see them all.

6. Laughing as i think of the poor guy who was just trying to get off a bike, on automatic, doing what one always does to get off a bike. It was probably one of those moments when the mind cannot make sense of what is happening… followed, of course, by embarrassment.

   The tour de fat should have a website with pictures of all the creative bikes that people bring. I am sure there is a different assortment everywhere they go.