fort collins The line of traffic on Linden Street swelled with the slow, steady pulse of an endurance athlete pacing himself for a morning marathon. They came from near. They came from far. They came by bike, not by car.
And, brother, they just kept coming.
Nine years after the microbrew masters at New Belgium Brewing introduced the annual Tour de Fat bike festival to their hometown, the event has grown into a bona fide “happening,” a celebration of pedal power as it spreads its two-wheeled gospel to 11 cities throughout the West.
“It could be a Woodstock on wheels. I don’t think we have as many naked people, and ideally there’s not as many drugs. But it’s got that same kind of a vibe,” said Chris Winn, New Belgium’s self-titled Event Evangelist and emcee serving under the moniker the Reverend C. Ballyhoo. “Everybody sort of reverts to their inner child and they’re here to play. In the end there’s this collective good that we all get to contribute to.”
The tour rolls into Denver’s City Park on Saturday for a second consecutive stop and is expected to attract up to 4,000 cyclists. But nothing compares with the gathering of disciples at the epicenter in Fort Collins.
An estimated 7,500 costume-clad cyclists mounted human-powered steeds this past weekend for the 5-mile bike parade, which culminated Saturday in a field across the street from the New Belgium brewery. Commingling with a crowd of music lovers and amber ale aficionados, a throng some 12,000 strong united in the name of bicycles and beer.
“We wanted to make it as much about bikes as our beer. The name Tour de Fat, that’s after our flagship amber ale. And while we did start out thinking about what we could do with Fat Tire Amber Ale and the New Belgium brand, it began to evolve,” Tour de Fat conceiver Greg Owsley said. “We thought, ‘Man, we have this highly conscious audience that’s coming out, let’s leave them with something better. How can we promote bicycling not just at the event, but every day?’ And that’s been the goal.”
Noting that New Belgium was born on a bicycle seat when brew master Jeff Le- besch concocted the Fat Tire recipe while touring European breweries on his two-wheeler, Owsley pointed to how the company has come full circle by giving away a bicycle at every Tour de Fat stop to a volunteer willing to give up his or her car for good.
“It’s just a reflection of our whole lifestyle,” said Owsley, a dedicated rider and “fairly good” bike commuter. “I consider the bike one of the top things on the planet in terms of how you can personally make a difference in terms of sustainability.”
Many Tour de Fat participants qualify as believers.
“I don’t have a car, only a bike. It’s all I commute on, and it’s great,” said Adam Lum, a 24-year-old Colorado State student riding a 7-foot-tall contraption he built with the help of friends Lucas Grim and Taylor Nixon.
Dressed in a superhero mask and cape, Lum described the event as “kind of a celebration of the biking and beer cultures, which are kind of similar here in Fort Collins.”
Never was that more evident than during the afternoon Slow Ride competition, a sort of anti-race in which champion Jonathan Arnold of Carbondale won by being the last one across the finish line, toting at least one adult beverage in his belly.
“I always have been a little slow,” Arnold admitted afterward.
Amid all the hoopla, the Tour de Fat has raised more than $800,000 for local charities — including Bike Denver, Flight for Life Colorado and The Derailleur Bicycle Collective — by donating all profits from beer sales and merchandise. Event organizers want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get on board with biking in all aspects of their lives.
“There are more bikes than cars out there in the world, but in America we don’t use them the way the rest of the world does,” Winn said. “But as gas prices continue to go up, more and more people will turn to the bike as a tool for transportation as opposed to just a recreational toy.
“And that’s part of the movement.”
