Tour de fat has come and gone another year. I got my ride in in the morning, and made it down to the festival in time to get on line by about 11:15. I finally got inside a little after 12:30. You see, we got on line that early, because it was already 2 blocks long. I heard some people finally gave up and bailed to the downtown scene after waiting in line for 2.5 hours. Needless to say, something was a bit different this year.

The beer was good, the entertainment was fun, but the crowd seemed a little odd. The last couple years I haven’t been able to walk 20 feet without seeing somebody I needed to talk to. This year came with a significant lack of familiar faces. People were getting more crazy than normal. Not the ‘I’m drunk and happy to see you crazy’ but the ‘I’m f-ing wasted get the f—- out of my way’.

I don’t know what happened, but I doubt we’ll see another tour de fat in flag without some changes made in the crowd control direction. Only time will tell. . .

I guess on the plus side, I still had a good time, and ended up three sheets to the wind by about 4:00, so it couldn’t have been that bad, right?

Sunday brought a group cruise up waterline to see the leaves change and to work off the alcohol. It was a beautiful ride, and it seemed there were a lot of other people who had the same idea. We saw at least 4 groups of other folks who were just as intoxicated as us the day before on the same ride. The new banner picture is courtesy of Kristen from that very ride.

Other than that, I seem to have acquired the riding bug again. The Dust Devil Mountain Bike Series is starting up down in the valley of the sun, and this year they’ve added a Dawn to Dusk endurance event. I think I might try and get ready for that, it will be a good interim ride between pines to the mines and the long winter between now and 24 in the OP.

Of course, ‘getting ready for that’ included a climb up elden after work yesterday. The climb went well, but the descent left me with a ripped pair of shorts and a healthy case of road rash on my right hip from hitting the ground at about 20 mph. I was coming down the road and, because I still haven’t gotten into the routine of charging the lights yet, I was careening down elden in the near darkness when I hit a deceptively deep water groove across the road. My right hand was taking a little break at the time, and decided it didn’t want to be on the bars anymore.

I’ll be bathing in neosporin for the next day or two.