Hats off to New Belgium Brewery for throwing a great party on Saturday! Their Tour de Fat is a traveling bike circus, concert, beer garden, fundraiser, and bike love-fest all rolled into one.
It started out with a police-escorted parade through downtown (Portland must be leading the country in bike parades per year!). The New Belgium crew showed up with all manner of Chunk-ified bikes and funky costumes. The coolest thing was an Xtracycle boom-box bike that kept things fun with a great selection of disco party music blaring through the streets as we rode along.
Once back in Waterfront Park, we were greeted with the wonderful announcement of, “the beer garden is now open.” All the beer money went directly to the BTA and PUMP….and let’s just say that I’ve done my part for the Portland bike community!;-).
Beers firmly in hand, we all settled in for a sultry vaudeville/burlesque show from the Yard Dogs Road Show and some good, old-fashioned foot stompin’, Dukes of Hazzard style banjo pickin’ bluegrass from Oakhurst.
Their was also a bike test corral full of quirky, creative and weird bikes. I’ve been wanting to ride a tall bike for months now and I finally got my chance. It was amazing! Now I know why people love their SUVs…I was large and in charge! But besides a tall bike there was a shoe bike, an articulated “swing bike”, a bike with 14″ wide tires!, a pump bike, and many others.
Much credit goes to the event crew at New Belgium. In a town that knows a thing or two about fun bikey events, you guys held your own, and then some. See you next year!
[Click here for all of my Tour de Fat photos]
PUMP (Portland United Mountain Pedalers) is our local mountain bike advocacy group. They work to maintain trails and make sure the interests of mountain bikes are represented in often thorny land access issues. 
