Start of winter fat biking...

We received some snow today. It's still falling in fact. I don't think it will be any tremendous amount, but it made for a fun fat bike wandering this afternoon.

I headed out with a friend of mine from Hidden Falls Park in St Paul, and we meandered through woods, beach, and a little bit of trail. The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers makes for some good fat bike exploration possibilities, and it's right out my back door. I plan on riding down there quite a bit this winter.

The Mukluk is really an amazing bike. There's no need for a trail, which allows me to explore areas near where I live that I've never taken the time to see. I pretty much just wander off into the woods and see where I end up (well, I do navigate).

Riding the river floodplain feels a bit like an odd sort of slow, obese trials riding- it's a lot of picking lines over obstacles, but instead of jumping, it's just rolling over stuff. I'm sure that sounds contrived and perhaps pointless, and maybe it is, but it's fun. I like it.

And the shoreline riding is perhaps my favorite fat biking near where I live so far. Our local rivers provide great scenery and tend to remove you from realizing you may still actually be in a big city. Today involved floating over lots of sand, which is awful to ride on a non-fat bike, and rolling plenty of rock beds. We dove into the woods whenever the shore got too full of downed trees, and dove back whenever there was a good stretch to ride. When the snow started coming down hard, we paused to enjoy watching snowy sheets of ice float by on the water, and got excited at the prospect that we have a whole winter coming to enjoy on big tires and skis...it's just getting started.

Riding through the debris of the Mississippi floodplain...

Shoreline of the Mississippi, covered in fresh snow...consistency varied today from loose to packed frozen sand, to gravel or rock beds, all covered in snow toward the end of the ride...

If you're interested, here's where the ride took place:

Early fat bike rides...

I’ve been breaking in the Mukluk and enjoying it all. I’m predicting a lot of fun on this bike as the seasons change and we dive into another Northern winter. And even though I’m looking forward to the cold riding, I sure haven’t been minding the extended fall we’ve been having. It’s been a stellar season for riding here in MN, and I’m going to accept is as a pay back for the months of missed riding post doctor stuff. Not bad.

Last weekend I did something I’ve never done on a bike, thanks to the new fat machine- I headed up north of Grand Marais, and covered some Lake Superior beach miles. It’s amazing where the Mukluk can go- I sure couldn’t have comfortably ridden through the loose rocky shoreline on any of my other bikes. My Karate Monkey probably would have made it through, but with way more struggle. Now this doesn’t mean the fat bike is some sort of miracle machine and there was never any hike a bike- it’s still super loose rock, and much of it off camber, but I was riding the majority of the time over rocks, runoff water, driftwood, sand, and even a few bones of expired critters- all the while with a big dumb smile enjoying the new riding capabilities.

I would have had a great time just sitting on this stretch of scenery, so being able to combine it with one of my favorite pastimes was great- I’m glad I bought this bike. I’m going to have to do some research to see if a beach ride overnighter route can be figured out somewhere on Superior.

Dropping into beach goodness...

There's the big dumb smile...

Exertion and relaxation...

A new fat bike in it's element (one of it's many elements)...

So cool floating lines through stuff like this on a bike...

Not a bad sunrise after climbing out of my tent the next morning either...

I also got out on a local Mukluk ride yesterday morning with my friend Nate who was riding a maiden voyage on his newly built up 9er. We headed from our neighborhood in STP down to the Sibley House on the MN River to see if we might meet up with a “river ramble” ride that Gnat from Salsa Cycles was putting on. We just missed them, as they left pretty early in the morning to get some sunrise shots in during the ride. We saw them a couple times but couldn’t manage to connect with them. Our ride was great however. There’s a great amount of river bottom trail to ride, and if you’re sporting big tires, there’s a ton of off trail wandering to do with much wildlife to see. It’s a floodplain, and you can pretty much ride wherever you’d like in it on 4” rubber. The Salsa ride was expecting to do anywhere from 30-50 miles of rambling. Including the pavement part of our 2-man ride, we covered 23 in the small amount of time we had before we had to duck for other commitments. I’m thinking of heading back down there today to explore some more before it gets buried in snow for the winter.

Sun waking up the river bottom, which was being visited my many happy cyclist yesterday...

Variety of big birds seen along the river ramble...they too like the fall mornings...

I’m loving the Mukluk so far and I can’t wait to see where it takes me in the future…