I'm starting to see fatbikes everywhere.
The first one was this Salsa Mukluk 2, in the window of Braun's bicycles in Kitchener.
A sweet bike, and surprisingly light considering it has 3.7 inch balloon tires on the thing.
So the next day, I see someone riding something similar along the bottom of my backyard, and then another one on the street. Yeah, it was snowing today, but not long enough to make you put your road bike away, surely.
Patrick Verriet at Braun's says there's a lot of interest in the fatbike (not fat tire bike?) for winter riding, since you can ride with a low tire pressure and essentially have a snowshoe's worth of traction connecting with the road. And bumps? Icy washboard is no problem, although Patrick says he sees the Mukluk as appealing more to those who want to ride the hydrocut or a snow-slicked mountain bike facility.
Remember when ski resorts said they would "never" allow snowboards to mix with skiers? It won't be long before all of them are offering mid-winter ski-hill trail packages for cyclists. Money talks.
Martin Leonard has let his Fatbike Alaska blog go fallow, but there are some good posts there about the challenges of winter fatbiking, and some links. Guitar Ted posted earlier this year about fatbikes at Twenty Nine Inches.
While I like the notion of bike tech that will get more people riding in the winter, the skinny-tire guy in me is a bit revolted by the rubber on these fatbikes. I feel like the old fart rider who says, "If ordinary winter-studded tires were good enough for me pa, they's good enough for me."
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