A Ride on Global Fat-Bike Day

Today is Global Fat-Bike Day! There are fat bike rides all over, including a group ride in Minneapolis that is likely still taking place - they planned to ride about 50 miles in the Minnesota River Bottoms starting at noon today. I nearly drove to the cities for that one but our family schedule today is awfully busy so Owen and I opted to ride some great trails in River Bend Nature Center in Faribault, MN, instead.

We started the morning at Milltown, the shop where we purchased our fat bikes. There we got some info from Ben, the shop's owner, about where to ride and Ben adjusted my shift levers a bit (still tweaking to get them in the just-right position) A couple of guys came in to pick up a Surly fatbike that was in the shop and one of the guys told me he'd read my Beargrease Report - No Roads? No Problem! blog. Wow! He said he liked it, too. That sure made me feel good.

It's fun to note that my Beargrease Report blog post has had over 1,250 hits so far! That's largely because Milltown and Salsa mentioned the blog on their Facebook pages - and now other fat bike sites and pages have picked it up as well, including Fat-Bike.com who mentioned my blog on their "Weekly Dose of Fat"post on 11/23/12.

My blog post mentioned on Fat-Bike.com - Thanks Fat-Bike.com!!

After chatting with Ben, with some of the guys from the Cannon Valley Velo Club who stopped into the shop, and with Milltown's other patrons, Owen and I got on our bikes and headed to River Bend to ride.
Lovely scenery  - yeah, I mean the Beargrease as well as the bridges and river :)

It was overcast this morning, but fairly warm at about 40 degrees. It was the kind of morning that could keep a person indoors because it was gloomy - but it was pretty much perfect weather for a bike ride.

This morning's ride was our first time out on actual biking/hiking trails with our fat bikes and we sure had fun! Both Owen and I are pretty new to riding mountain bike trails - I've been out on trails three times total, Owen's been out on trails once. But the big fat tires on our bikes have us feeling pretty comfortable and confident as we build our skills.
Riding Bear in River Bend Nature Center

Our bikes managed the dirt trails well, with our big tires we hardly noticed the rocks and sticks we biked over. We felt secure on the patches of loose dirt we hit. I did find my rear tire spinning a bit on some uphills. Ben said I could run my back tire's pressure a bit lower and that will help. We rode for about an hour on some pretty standard dirt roads, tar paths and biking/hiking trails and had so much fun that we are planning to ride the trails again tomorrow.

Owen and I may have ridden today even if we didn't know about Global Fat-Bike Day - but knowing about Global Fat-Bike Day sure gave us extra motivation to get up and out of bed and on our bikes this morning. It felt great to be a part of something big - and I've got to tell you, gloomy skies sure looks a lot brighter when you're riding a fatbike :)
Happy bikers

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