Global Fat Bike Day 2015

Fat Bikes are fun. Global Fat Bike Day (#GFBD2015) is an opportunity for people around the world to celebrate that fun. In this part of the world, we decided to start our Fat Bike party at Coolum.

Heads turned as twenty chubby-tired bikes rolled onto the low-tide beach near the surf-club and headed north towards Noosa.

“Pop another wheelie!” I yelled out as we rolled over the sand.

Yes – our bikes keep reminding us that we’re all still kids.

(Photo: Tony Ryan)

Calum didn’t have a fat bike, so he rode with us on his 2.3″ mountain bike. He made it look easy.

(Photo: Troy Szczurkowski)

My friend Troy is Fat Bike veteran. He’s raced them in epic marathons through the snow in Alaska, he builds them, and he patiently answers questions from his mates who continually pick his brains about them. Troy lined us up across the sand and asked us to pose for this photo. I wasn’t surprised when he pulled a tripod out and sat his camera on it. The man thinks of everything.

My friend Murray lives at Coolum. He introduced me to Fat Biking a few years ago when he kindly lent me one of his, and invited me to go for a ride on the beach with him.

Thanks Muz!

It was good to catch up with him again.

Chris proudly showed off his new bike. He loves it! I bought his old one, and love it too. Win-win 🙂

Pedaling a bike on the beach can be hard work – even on hard low-tide sand. Sometimes even fat tyres can have trouble keeping up speed on the soft patches.

John rode higher up on the beach in search of harder sand. I couldn’t keep up with him, so I suppose that means he was successful.

After about an hour the sand ran out when we reached the headland at Noosa.

We left the beach and followed some back-streets towards the lookout.

The track up to the lookout involved a couple of pinch climbs.

Even though our grippy tyres were up to the task, some of us still had to push the bikes in a couple of places.

Laguna lookout overlooks the Noosa River and Hastings Street.

We rested for a while to enjoy the views of the bright blue water, sand bars and mountains on the horizon.

Young Tyler joined us for a group shot. We all clamoured to be in the frame with him and admired is bike.

Our “Party on Wheels” rolled down the hill from the lookout and hummed along Hastings Street in Noosa Heads. Although we were feeling peckish we decided to keep going and look for a cafe further up the river.

No one was in a hurry, so we stuck to the footpath and followed the Noosa River westward.

(Photo: Wayne Mahoney)

At the Marina there was no problem finding a place to park the bikes…

So we stopped for a quick bite to eat before hitting the trails at Wooroi.

Wooroi was a lot fun…

Fat bikes are great to ride on twisty single tracks. The tyres grip well. We enjoyed shooting around the tight bends.

We did a couple of laps of some recently upgraded tracks…

… and then followed some steep powerline tracks out of the forest.

After Wooroi we followed an old dirt road back towards Coolum.

… under the motorway…

…and along some fire roads behind lake Weyba.

The cool thing about this part of the world is that despite the large amount of property development it’s still possible to have a care-free ride covering long distances “in the bush” and not have to worry too much about competing with motor vehicles.

But punctures are a fact of life – especially with fat bikes.

This twig pierced John’s tyre. He had a tubeless setup and was able to keep riding with the twig in his tyre without losing any air.

I don’t have tubeless wheels on my fat bike, so when I got a flat tyre, my friends stuck around with me and helped me to change the tube.

We emerged back into civilization near Coolum and followed the bike path into town, just in time for lunch.

I’ll have a burger with a glass of “Yenda Red Ale”, please!

There were smiles all round today. Riding a fat bike is all about smiles, not taking yourself too seriously, and appreciating the places you’re able to visit.

We rode just over 60km in about six and a half hours. During that time we climbed about 580 metres in elevation, and I burned about 2,800 kcal.

Although this ride had one or two short difficult climbs, it was still reasonably easy.

I’ll rate it 7 out of 10 on the tough-o-meter.

UPDATE: Here’s Darb’s video of the day: