The idea was simple, get Shrekie and a few others interested in making the 6hour pilgrimage to the land of snow to ride Bicycles. I must be a good motivational speaker because in the end we had seven bitterrooters lined up to make the trip to Island Park. Sure, the motivation could have been driven by the offering of free lodging comp'd by the Red Barn checkbook....complete with hot tub, full kitchen, flat screen tv, etc. Or maybe it was the bottle of Irish Whiskey and 4 cases of beer. Regardless, it does seem like we have a fantastic cycling community here in this valley and ANY opportunity to ride bikes with good pals i'm all in and hopefully poked in the chest for being responsible for getting a crew together. Any liver damage....blame someone else please.
So, up at 3am friday morn for the red eye flight to Island Park Idaho for the 2nd Annual gathering of like minded folks.
sitting next to this guy for 6 hours is a crack-up. Shrekie in fine form.
We arrive at Sawtelle lodge by 10am just in time to say hello to a few familiar faces and then sit back and listen to the current state of affairs of fat biking. The folks at Fitzgeralds bike shop put in a serious amount of work to pull this event off, the organisation was perfect. We heard from land managers from four different agencies, had a representitive from Yellowstone sitting in, and a member of West Yellowstone's city council letting us know she'd love it IF the could host a similar event. We had a passionate Casey Greene give a talk on behalf of Adventure Cycling, one of the largest cycling organisations within the US. IMBA was also present. We also had representitives from QBP, product engineers from Salsa. It was a stacked room. And everyone was there with advocacy in mind. I think Gary Sjoquist summed it up best by saying if everyone rode bikes the world would be a perfect place. Maybe so.
how to get 5 bikes and 5 people in one rig.....it's nice to have buddies that work for U Haul
Friday afternoon was made complete by a nice ride into the evening which also gave us the opportunity to put faces to names. This
guy here had a fantastic report of the weekend along with some nice photography. Later that evening a slide show from
Tracey and Jay Petervary from their 1100 mile, record setting journey across the Iditarod Trail. Their trials and tribulations along this journey just blew me away. I know for a fact that i'm not tough enough for that particular ride : ) ,kudos to people like the Petervary's that like to share these amazing adventures with us all. These folks are an asset and more than eager to help.
the experts, from left to right...Joe Meiser, Tracey & Jay Petervary
The remainder of the weekend was spent riding bikes.
and in between the rides.....well, of course we owe a huge thanks to these guys:
