1996 Tahoe Fat Tire Festival

The Tahoe Fat Tire Festival happened over weekend. We enjoyed some good riding, but the other aspects of the trip fell short of expectations.

We drove up Friday evening after Doug negotiated the purchase of a car. I became entangled in conversation with a random salesman while Doug and Sonyo were signing the papers, so to end the dialog I pretended to fall asleep when he briefly left to get something to drink. He was disappointed. Then I really did fall asleep. I have no idea how long I was out. I was supposed to be watching the bikes, so I was relieved to find them safe in the truck when I woke up.

After a nice drive listening to some Pixies the whole way, we arrived in Tahoe City a little after eight o'clock, going straight to the motel to check in. Doug informed the desk clerk we would be splitting the bill, and she had no problem with that. Doug whipped out a checkbook and I simultaneously snapped down the Visa (It's everywhere you want to be!). The lady informed me that they don't accept credit cards. I was astounded. A motel that doesn't take credit cards? I handed over 56 of my hundred bucks in spending money. No T-shirt for me at this festival, I guess.

After dumping our stuff in the room, we dressed and hurried off to the Naughty Dog bar where the night ride was supposed to leave from. When we arrived, the place was packed, but nobody knew anything about a night ride. Eventually a guy told us the ride was cancelled, but I think he was just trying to make us go away. Doug and I split a pitcher of beer and called it a night. The highlights of the night (lowlights?) included getting our picture taken (we don't know why) and seeing some dude with a pristine 1986 Whiskeytown Downhill T-shirt. I assume he only wears it for special occasions, or perhaps he has a bunch of them.

Saturday we went to the sign-in at a bike shop, and it was typically disorganized. The dude had trouble finding our names on the list, and the swag bags (a $16 value!) were nowhere to be found. We were later presented with them and the swag was composed of two PowerBars, a Stoker bar (yuck), a sticker, and a small bag made from hemp. Yeah, $16 value. Sure.

Sometime later, we finally took off on the the ride. After a warm-up on the road, we hit a trail that Doug and I raced on a couple years ago. The climb just rolled gradually upwards and was never very steep. At the top of the climb we hit the Tahoe Rim Trail, which we would stay on all the way back to the parking lot.

One of the many rest stops on the day.

At first the Rim Trail reminded me of the singletrack at Mammoth. Then some of it was reminiscent of Georgetown. Then it got ugly. We rode probably the rockiest, most technical trail I have ever been on in Tahoe. We climbed up to the top of this place the locals call "Glass Mountain." It was nothing but loose plates of shale—no dirt to be seen—and when you rode over it, the sound was literally like riding through broken glass. In fact, there was no dirt for miles, just volcanic rock. The last couple miles reminded us of the horse trails around Horseshoe Bar that used to eat our  chainrings, except it was downhill. The dirt reappeared but with big boulders to drop down. The ride was good, but would have been great had we not stopped so much. There were almost thirty people on the ride, and some were not so fast on the technical stuff, so the stops became longer and more frequent on the second half of the ride. I would definitely do the ride again if I could ride with fewer people.

After a short post-ride nap, we porked out on Mexican food. After dinner we headed to Squaw to check out the bike expo, but it was all shut down. The brewfest cost $13, so it wasn't worth it to go in because we only wanted one or two beers. We watched the dual slalom for a while, but it didn't hold our attention for long, so we bailed.

This guy ate it hard and bent his front wheel.

Sunday, of course, we did the Flume Trail. What festival would be complete without it? It was the same route as the race course. I definitely recognized the climb on the back side up to Marlette Lake; it was as steep as I remembered. There were about 15 of us on the ride, and everyone was pretty strong, so we waited much less. I actually surprised myself on the climbs. I was in the top 5 people at the top of all three. Doug and I were also smoking on the downhills. I'm sure some people didn't like all the crazy passes we were making, but it's no fun sucking the Tahoe moon dust. The Sprouts like that clean air out front.

After the first section of the Flume, we took off downhill after a short wait. I ended up passing everyone except the dude leading the ride, who was a very strong Tahoe local, but only because I didn't know where I was going. When we hit the second section of the Flume, he was motoring. I had to give it almost everything I had to stay on his wheel. I was hurting. But what he had on me in pure speed I made up with skill; I was better on the singletrack. He would gap me a little on the straightaways, but I would get him in the turns and technical stuff.

When we stopped, he admitted he couldn't shake me, which was cool coming from a stud expert racer. We gapped everybody by a long way. Anyway, the Flume is a cool ride.

The "festival" was a bust for the most part. The organizers were anything but organized, and many of the activities on the flyer never happened. But we did a couple good rides and learned some new trails on the west side of the lake.

One thing I never realized is even though we always start the Flume Ride down at Spooner Lake, you ride way north, and the Flume Trail is actually a stone's throw from my dad's condo in Incline Village. All this time and it never occurred to me.

I'm going to try to get up to the condo for a couple days between jobs to do some riding, and I'll definitely figure out a Flume route I can do right from the condo. That would be too cool.

Later.