A Fat Year's End

Well it's gone - another year of fun on the bike. Due to all my "new home" projects that needed to be done this past year the quantity of riding time was hugely less (love putting terms like that together). I suffered plenty of mental anguish dreaming of bike riding while working on those projects, but the work needed to be done and such is the price you pay for moving into a new place.



I love where I live...I have 360-degree views, lots of my favorite back-road rides at my door step, the forest is only 10-miles away (my favorite place to be) and best of all is the snow. I love snow and can not believe I spent so many years in that dreary snowless valley. After living up here last winter, I rediscovered that love of snow and winter activities which set in motion my fatbike obsession.



Actually the discovery of snow biking escalated my obsessive-compulsive need to buy-and-ride-every-bike-possible. It's a shameless disease, I try to control it, but I admit I am weak when it comes to new bikes and parts to test in my evil fun bike laboratory.

The first fatbike was a 9:Zero:7 (appropriately named the Baconator, due to it's amazing fatness that I'd never seen before). Then, mysteriously, a forest green Fatback showed up (aka Mr Gump)...yeah, I'm weird for naming my bikes, but I've found that I tend to keep them longer when I name them - one of my self-treatments for my obsession. I've been swapping back and forth between the two trying to find a weakness so that I can sell one, however I've discovered nothing except each frame has it's own strengths in the snow. Now I'm starting to think that my boy may inherit (steal) one before long.



Before fatbikes I rode to the snow, then turned around and went home simply because I couldn't ride far in the snow. With fatbikes I'm riding over huge snowdrift rollers that are stupidly deep, plus fatbike riding on the snow has simply reignited my biking passion in a big way. Back country riding and exploring in winter on a bike is unbelievable and I can not understand why it took me so long to discover it...sometimes we need to take the blinders off and be a bit more open minded I guess. My interest grew only after I moved up a few thousand feet higher in elevation, where winter's beauty can not only be seen, but lived.



2012 was a great year, it was my 50th year on this earth, my 22nd year of marriage to the best gal ever and my best friend ever, a year of becoming a parent again with the adoption of my daughter, a year of rediscovery that snow is a gift that brings out the childish nature in me, and my 1st year of riding fatbikes. WhooHooo!!!