Disclaimer: No actual unicorns were harmed in the filming of the the Bike Black Ribbon Society’s Beach Ride & Unicorn Hunt. This post is rated NC-17 and should be viewed by mature audiences only.
Eleven amigos answered the call to come out and hunt unicorns on the third coast of the big whiskey last weekend. We gathered at Harrington Beach State Park on a cool blue bird of a day. I ‘pretty much’ always bring some beer to share, when I organize a ride, so I stopped along the hi-way and picked up a case of Silos to wet our whistles. One by one, I handed out the quart cans as we went through the familiar dance of gearing up for a ride. By the time the carnival was about ready to roll, Beaker had gotten saddled with 4 or 5 of the giant cans. Nothing like another 10 pounds in your pack, but I guess that’s better than running out of refreshments! Well supplied, we hit the road, out of the state park, (because you can’t ride your bike on the beach within a state park in Wisconsin). We would hit the beach just outside of the park’s southern boundary. The entry to the beach crosses a small creek that’s dry most of the time, but due to an overnight, soaking rain storm, was about ten inches deep. I hit it with a good head of steam that I had gathered rolling down the road that leads to the beach. I took a good soaking on everything from my shoulders on down from blasting through the water…and then, the hunt was on!
We rolled south with a light tailwind on what has become to be known as ‘hero sand’. The previous night’s rain made the beach into a fast track from the surf zone to almost all of the way to the high water mark. I started the ride with about 10 psi front and rear and never had to let any air out along the way. It wasn’t long before Zito called out a Derby and the silos of beer began to flow.
We passed around a couple quarts and then sailed easily south towards Port Washington. We derbied a couple more times along the way and OG won every single round. He executed a ‘shake and bake’ technique that left the rest of the field defenseless to his every whim. On our way south, we kept an eye out and scouted a couple of spots that we wanted to stop and shoot pictures on the way back from PW. Before we knew what hit us, we had the Port Washington Power Generating Station on the horizon. We rolled into town past the sewage treatment plant and the marina.
After a quick stop at ZuZu Pedals (our favorite local bike shop in PW) we headed up to Tello’s and piled our fatties out front.
We filled up the sidewalk cafe seating and feasted upon big plates of tacos/burritos/chimi-changas y tortas. I think there were pitchers of beer, Oh and bees. So many bees, that Zito, put a dollar bounty on every bee, for which, we could provide a ‘confirmed kill’. So a better (or more factual) title for our story could have been “Beach Ride Bee Hunt” or even “Beach Ride – Beer Hunt”, because we took all of Zito’s wrinkled bounty dollars and bought more beer at the gas station across the street.
We zipped back out onto the beach and eventually stopped to grab some shots of Beaker and OG launching their bikes off’a shit. We stopped at quite a few places as we began to retrace our steps from earlier in the day.
A couple of times during the ride, I took off on somebody else’s fat-bike. I nabbed Beaker’s Necro Pugs and then stole Puck’s Schlick, for a little while. The sand was still nice and firm and the winds were calm for the balance of the ride. I think the group wanted to savor the moments….or maybe that was the effect of all the tacos and beer. We never saw a unicorn, but the bee and beer hunting turned out to be world-class. Each and every one of us enjoyed a spectacularly beautiful beach cruise back to Harrington.
What kind of group rides do you and your local band of bike hooligans enjoy? Send us your short ride saga and we’ll post it up for everybody to enjoy! Send your shenanigans to info@fat-bike.com!
Looks like great times. Cool story and even better pictures! I like the air! Great job fellas.
Looks like a good time. Once you ran down the unicorns how did you finish them off?
Epic! Gonna share this to show the lamos round here, what awesome biking is.
Man these Fat Bikes get more and more tempting after every article I read about them.
So seczhee!