tour de fat

I woke up early Saturday, showered and drove to Tempe to meet Katie Ringler at her friend Joel's house. When I got there I got bikes prepared and threw my new lock in my Camelback as we readied for the Tour de Fat - an 11 city tour run by New Belgium Brewery to bring awareness to bike riding. Read more about it here at this website - www.tour-de-fat.com. This event starts with a bike parade and ends with a festival of drinking and fun.

Right before we left to meet up with the other thousands of bike riders, and after seeing one of the other guys we were with in a Pirate costume, I threw on my plumbing one-piece cover-all and jumped on Eric's bike and headed to Tempe Town Lake. This is the same costume I wore on my last bike parade during the SoMa 5-block Mardi Gras parade when I rode with Carly and Amanda with the ReCycle Bikes CoOp in Little Rock. We crept down the Tempe streets with thousands and thousands of costumed bike enthusiast, most with souped up bikes and mustaches, and some with amazing stereo systems. I just happened to be near some of the cooler looking bicyclists when a local newspaper gal was snapping pictures (look for me to the left of the guy with the halo, I also have on a green headband to match the cover-all):



Now I'm a local celebrity.

I wish I had more photos to show y'all but I haven't received any from the guy in our group who served as the historian. But maybe some soon. After this photo, though, we ended the parade back at Tempe Town Lake and enjoyed the celebrations. Even though the beer was $5 a pop and the entertainment okay, it was much better than the carnival-style Oktoberfest the week before. The best part was the enclosure of trick or crazy bicycles that I got a chance to experiment on - they were awesome ranging from a bike with tennis shoes as tires to little bikes that you had to pedal so fast to even move an inch.

Beyond that, the weekend was nice with temperatures in the mid-70s and windy, but still sunny and no clouds.

I had expensive sushi on Friday night with Shawn and talked about the Foundation and his life. I watched football and baseball on Sunday. I didn't go to the Cardinals vs. Cowboys game but did see it in its entirety on television.

And I also bought two new bikes - matching red Schwinns from the 1980s. One is rideable but squeaks and the other needs some work on the back gear before riding. I'm going to bring them by the CoOp, Bike Saviours, later this week and get started on fixing them up a bit.

Other than that, I have been looking for flights for Christmas and am deciding whether to take the Foreign Service Officer exam in November or February.

Any advice?