F.F.T.W.T.F

a.k.a. :Fruita Fat Tire With The Family

With the weather conspiring against me once again, one by one friends were cancelling on the trip to The Fruita Fat Tire Festival that I had rescheduled for myself after the Spring Trip had to be moved to St George.  The last holdout was Nick who was scheduled to close on his house at 10 am on Friday, the day we were supposed to leave.  How could that go wrong, right?

So at 10 am Thursday Nick cancelled.  I had a reservation for Friday and Saturday nights at the fabulous La Quinta Inn and nobody to go with.  Power couple Pam and Jeremy Jarnecke had been in Fruita since Wednesday, and I was hoping to hook up with them for some riding, and ZenMasterKenny and wife Meg had bailed on account of weather forecasts.  I had a maybe from Ryan Thomspon (I know how I spelled it) but that was it.

When I got home from work and told my wife (who had toyed with the idea of making it a family adventure until she realized she might be sharing a room with Nick and his excessive toiletries/luggage), she gave it some thought and decided to go for it.  This was an unusual bout of spontaneity for a woman who just recently found an acceptable replacement for her salt and pepper shakers which had been cracked since before my 10 year old son was conceived.  This meant bad news for Thomspon when he called back to say he thought he could make it and I told him he wasn’t invited any more.  But possibly some strengthening of the ties that bind for my little family.

As the question went around the dinner table as to who was bringing their bike, the score stood at one bike for five people.  It was my bike for the record.  Everyone else was apparently more excited about the indoor pool and hot tub at the motel than anything else.  In the snow and rain, we loaded up the family wagon and headed south.  One round of kid puke in the car in Spanish Fork Canyon, several pee breaks, and a few hours later we crossed the state line into Colorado.  Checked into the hotel and I changed into bike clothes while the rest of the fam-damnily donned swimsuits and we parted ways.  Unable to rise the Jarnecke’s on the phone, I made my way out to the Kokopelli Trailhead and some dirt.

Without much plan I started spinning over toward Mary’s Loop but detoured onto the Moore Fun Trail before I got there.  For no good reason, I had never ridden this trail in several trips to the area.  It’s a blast.  Ledgey, techy, climbing, followed by the sections of Fruita’s finest buff stuff, then more rocks.  A lot of work for a still fat man, but fun, interesting, trail riding.  No small amount of shame when a fully rigid SS sucked my doors off going up.  But the weather was holding and the trail conditions were perfect.

The overlook at the top of Moore Fun. Some nice exposure followed by killer techy downhill.

I farted around a little more, rode back onto Mary’s a little ways before heading back to the car, and the motel.  We headed over to the Festival which is pretty much just Fruita Main Street blocked off, and vendors, manufacturers and brewers passing out stickers, temporary tattoos,  freebies.  Fun for a bike geek.  Not quite as interesting for the non-riding family.  There were some things of interest however.

I think it's called.......

a Puke-A-Cycle.

The bike my kids were most interested in.

Fruita: Famous for singletrack, and headless chickens.

Rain dampened the evening’s festivities which mainly focused on concerts and copious amounts of beer.  Owen and Gavin kept getting carded so we went swimming.   Again.

Day two of the trip started with me going riding again, and the family going swimming,…again.  Then they checked out the Dinosaur Museum next to the hotel.  I went back out to Kokopelli.  I realized I have never spent more than a few hours over there and it was nice to have a chance to  take a little closer look.  This time I made it to Mary’s loop and my favorite ride in Fruita, Horsethief Bench.  Met up with riders from Portland, Denver, and Sacramento.  Rode with them for a bit, then parted ways, and I continued on Mary’s.  Rode Steve’s loop which was deserted unlike the rest of the zip code.  Enjoying the solitude once again.  And the perfect weather and trail conditions.

I'm hoping this is what hell looks like, just in case I don't make it into heaven.

Spun out to the Mack’s/Moore Fun Trailhead and took Moore Fun the other way(which I think is more funner).  I headed back into town so we could catch the “Clunker Crit” which is the high point of the festival.  After a slightly overdrawn introduction which included the presentation of the Key To The City of Fruita(which conveniently included a bottle opener) to Troy Rarick, owner of Over The Edge Sports in Fruita and granddaddy of the FFTF by the mayor, the race was set to begin. You could feel the buzz as people gathered for one of the truly classic traditions of mountain biking.   The rules are pretty simple:  There are no rules.  Race course, category, number of laps, direction of travel, articles of clothing, and the bike any particular rider is on, are subject to change at any time.  There are no losers, because there really is no winner.  It’s basically a game of Simon Says on two or more wheels.  I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

Pre-Race scene

Troy has a lot of fun for a dude that tucks in his t-shirts.

Start Line of the kids/"anybody else that wants to race" category

The gal in the black dress would later make the race PG-13.

You will know them by the trail of glitter in their wake.

Soundtrack-mobile.

Uhhh,....Squirrel Girl

Always wanted a swing bike.

First lap challenge: Dismount, and crawl through this frame.

Second Lap Challenge: Put on an article of clothing from the box.

Third Lap Challenge: Tandem(two people to a bike)

Fourth Lap Challenge: Swap bikes with somebody.

Before long, things just fell apart, and the 13th person across the line was declared the winner.  Fun stuff, and I got a few good ideas for the Frozen Hog next year.

Once again we opted out of the bachanalia that occurred in the evening, opting instead to,..you guessed it, swim.  Finally tracked down the Jarnecke’s who checked into our hotel to rest up before heading to Moab Sunday.  We took their advice, and robbed a page out of Kris’s blog and took the family home through Castle Valley, Moab, and Arches National Park.  Since my wife already blogged about the trip through arches, and since photos are a gigantic pain in the ass to upload on WordPress, I’ll wrap up an already too long post with thanks to my patient wife and long-suffering kids for letting me drag them through my world for a weekend.  Fruita was so fun, we may head back in two weeks.

With apologies to Fuzzy for missing his party in Price.