Weekend at Fat Tire Festival

We spent this past weekend at our first Fat Tire Festival at Alafia State Park. There were over 350 mountain bikers of all ages. It was awesome!! They fed us Saturday meals and Sunday breakfast. Specialized, Trek/Gary Fisher, and Cannondale were there with a fleet of bikes to demo for "free". We even saw a group of mountain unicyclists and a tandem mountain bike couple.



We tried to get there somewhat early on Friday to find people we were hoping to meet up with. We ended up sharing the campsite with Christi and Gerald, their friend Dena, and three guys from the area. The camping area was fairly large and was able to accommodate all 350 of us, but we learned that there was ONE shower each for women and men. The SWAMP mountain biking club that hosted the event put up 3 portable showers. !@#?!

We rode about 10 miles on Friday which was a lot of fun. The trails were drier than the last time we were there. On Saturday, we were fed oatmeal and bagels for breakfast. There were group rides at Boyette in the morning, based on skill level. We signed up for the B- group, but didn't realize that many riders overestimated their skill level. I moved to the front of the pack early on to avoid having to stop so much. It was our 1st time on those trails and they were fun and flowed well.



After lunch, we signed up for another group ride. This time I signed up for the B- group again, but John signed up for the B+ group. Again, most of the B- riders tended to overestimate their skill level. Half of my group bailed out before North Creek, and John's group bailed half way through. By the time we got back, the shower lines were LONG. All the guys at our campsite chose to use the hose to "shower". Dinner was amazing...see menu below.



The mosquitos were out in force every night there. As soon as the sun went down, there were swarms of them everywhere. Other than that, the weather cooled down this week which made it really nice.

This morning we both demo'd a Cannondale RZ One Forty Carbon 1 (by the way, this retails for $6,200) bike. The bike was awesome!!!! It felt lighter than my current bike. If I could win a lottery or if someone feels like donating the bike to me...I don't think I will be buying one anytime soon.

Overall, great weekend. The weather was perfect. The food was great. We met a lot of great people and made new friends. We must have logged around 50 miles for the weekend.