Fat Tires and Glaciers

This weekend was the first in many that I have actually stayed in the city this summer. With so many few nice hot weekends left in the year it's hard not to want to head into the wilderness. However, Saturday was the much anticipated Tour de fat (http://www.newbelgium.com/tour-de-fat-2010-schedule) and it was on my top list of things not to miss this summer. Since my life as a Miller Promo girl is over I can actually enjoy events now like this instead of standing inside a liquor store trying to bribe people with t-shirts to buy miller lite.

I knew how much my friends Meghan and Neil would enjoy the Tour de Fat so I invited them to come to Denver and stay with us. It took a little convincing (it is a 5 hour drive for them after all) but they came and I was so excited. Tour de Fat is an event put on by New Belgium Brewery which is based out of Fort Collins, Colorado. The goal of the festival is to raise money for bicycle and environmental charities. The event was held at City Park and was free but then you could pay $5 for a beer token (bonus: they are good for the next year if you don't use them all!) and then stand in line and use your tokens towards one of several of New Belgium's brews. They encourage everyone to dress as their alter ego promoting that, "when everyone is weird, no one is" so of course we dressed up. Beer and costumes, just so happen to be my favorite two things:




The group. Of course not everyone got as dressed up as Malia, Chad and me.

The weather was perfect, if not a bit hot and it was the best people watching ever. Nearly everyone was dressed in costumes ranging from store bought (Optimus Prime or Captain America) to home made (two girls dressed as peanut butter and jelly with a baseball bat). Since it's an event to promote and sponsor biking, they had a bike parade, tons of bike parking and the vibe could not have been better. Some of the highlights of the day included, what I call, "The circle of death" where they let about 10 or so people in at a time to ride bikes like this:

I was told the founder of the company makes all these crazy bikes and then lets people at the event ride them...or try too anyways, most looked impossible to master. Hence the helmets they make you wear.

This provided great entertainment to watch. They also had three stages with bands and comedy acts, food from local eateries and bikes placed randomly around the park that you could test out. Even better than all of that was, we found, Port-a-karaoke:

Yes, they actually had taken a handicap Port-o-potty and made it over into a karaoke party booth. Of course, we all had to pile inside and test it out. I've never had so much fun singing in my life. If you know Malia and I you know we center all our parties around karaoke, alcohol and costumes so this was the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, the Tour de Fat was over at 4pm so we headed over to the Sunnyside music festival.

We were still in costume and this was a much more tame event so we had a few slices of pizza and listened to a little music before heading home.

Malia came to our house later that evening for a cookout and to spend the night in preparation for hiking Mt. Elbert the next morning. The problem was, after our day in the sun no one really felt like waking up at 5am to drive to Leadville to hike. So Sunday we ended up hiking St. Mary's Glacier. Neil and Meghan had to head back to Crested Butte anyways, so I picked a short 1.5 mile roundtrip hike that was right off I-70 (exit 283) and nine miles up a windy road. After a few wrong turns we finally found the trailhead which was crowded with cars on the left side of the road. While we barely broke a sweat hiking, the views of the glacier and the lake were beautiful.

(Malia and bebe on what was left of the snow on the glacier) I read that there was perineal snow in this area but did not find this to be the case (a little disappointing!) This is, however, a very easy spot to get too and would make a nice day trip especially for anyone wanting to bring an out of town guest. We saw several people hiking with ski's in (to ski what I'm not sure because this ice block was nasty and small) but I have heard this is a popular spot for back country skiing and boarding in the winter. It wasn't a 14er so there was no glory in the hike, but the view was still spectacular and we all enjoyed the leisure in the hike:


I was so glad to have Neil and Meghan in town with us for the weekend and have enjoyed having our friendship grow with them these past few months. Sometimes I think all it takes is having one common obsession to bring friends closer together. I am enjoying all these adventures with my friends that every weekend is brought and can only hope to find new crazy things to enjoy all winter long!