Fat-bike Takes Team-A First Place at Riverwest 24

Accomplishing what they narrowly missed with a 3rd place last year, Team Trippin’ the Fatty Boom Bastic, this year with riders Tony Berger, Dave Lunz, Jim Huber, Colin Ford, Todd “Schmeeds” and Aristotle Peters, took 1st place in the coveted Team A competition, and 12th Overall out of 277 Teams, during the Riverwest 24 this past weekend on a custom-built Schlick Cycles Northpaw Fat-bike besting competing teams on road bikes and even a deceptively fast team on a 20-inch BMX bike!

The Riverwest 24 is a 24-hour race/community building event that highlights the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee. The entire community wakes up to cheer on the riders as they navigate open streets to arrive at 4 checkpoints per lap. How you get to those checkpoints it up to you. You just need to hit them in order.

The Team A portion of the competition requires up to 6 riders who all must use the same bike. Yep, just the one bike for the 6 riders so you have to keep it rolling. This is a shot of the height difference between teammates! The Surly Open Bar was installed upside down and allowed a lot of positions for riders of various sizes. We also had both a straight seatpost and a layback to help riders fit a bit better!

To add to the fun, and to engage with the community, racers complete as many as 23 Bonus Checkpoints where tasks are performed to earn Bonus Laps. One of the Bonus Checkpoints was this Dunk Tank right outside our team HQ! With temps barely in the 60’s it was a cool plunge for the 25% or so of the competitors who got dunked.

There was one other fat-bike racer competing on his Salsa Mukluk in the Team B competition where each team competition is allowed to ride his/her own bike. His name is Ryan. We are going to try to hook up for an interview!

The race bikes were not the only fat-bikes in attendance at the RW24. We saw several cruising the streets checking out the event and here is our own Team-A champ, Aristotle Peters, wowing the ladies during a bit of down time between stints on the race bike.

Race fuel comes in a variety of guises, PBR was consumed as well as Lakefront Cream City Pale Ale and a couple of home brews from the participants as well as TONS of food including this midnight delivery of pizza from Times Square Bistro and Pizza in Milwaukee.

There are a bunch of photos online and on Facebook check #rw24 and #riverwest24

Here is a link to Greg’s Flickr where there are more pix of the Team and of the event in general – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasmith/sets/72157634841936375/

Not related to fat-bikes but really cool is this video that was the product of one of the Bonus Checkpoints.  This production was made as part of the Riverwest 24 Bike Race (riverwest24.com). It was produced as a bonus checkpoint on July 27, Saturday morning between 2 and 4 AM. Riders who participated were awarded 2 bonus laps. Riders served as the cast and the crew, and we tried to get them through as fast as possible: one two- to three-minute scene and then they were back on their saddles. Chris Fons selected 8 scenes from The Godfather and adapted them for the garage. Except for two scenes that were lost due to production issues (um … camera not actually recording), these are all the scenes strung together.

The Godfather Uncut, a RW24 2013 Bonus Checkpoint from Renato Umali on Vimeo.