Had a chance to take a spin on a friend’s fattie and figured I’d share the experience. I was on my commute home from Boston on New Year’s Eve, and met up with some Bikeway Source team mates (husband/wife) who were out for a jaunt on their his/her fatties. It was about 15F, and they were getting near the end of their ride. This is a time of day (end of ride) that Mike, who has now ridden for 770 straight days, tries to avoid, and he threw out, “You know, if we swung by our house, I have a seat/post we could swap out of Cathy’s bike that would make it fit you perfectly and we could go hit up some trails.” Almost as if this was part of the master plan…hmm.
A few minutes later I was doing laps in their back yard on the snow which had the consistency of styrofoam. The feel was pretty similar to a regular MTB, but right away I wanted to start riding over things. The only suitable obstacles in sight were Mike’s raised flower beds which he’d built the past Spring, and I wisely managed to resist. We headed out to the driveway, and once on the pavement, the handling had a fairly odd quality. Cathy describes it as driving a car with a very bad front alignment, which seems pretty accurate. I’m not sure exactly what the science is, but with the fat tires, there was initial resistance to turning, and then it wanted to keep turning. Wide contact areas and lots of mass I guess. After a few laps on the tar, I started to get used to it, and we set out for the trails of the Landlocked Forest. If you live near Boston, mtb, and haven’t checked it out, you should!:
http://www.landlockedforest.com/
Heading out:
We had about 6" of snow on the ground, and had been through several freeze/thaw cycles with some rain as well. This unfortunately meant that anywhere people had walked/skiied was now solid ice. The untracked snow had enough crust that we were only digging in about .75 ", but I’m pretty sure would have been unrideable on my regular MTB. I quickly found that the trick was to “connect the snow” and not try to turn/apply power on the shiny stuff. Nothing revolutionary, but definitely more of a margin for error when crossing the ice patches then there would be on traditional tires. Even on the solid icy foot/paw prints, the tire’s ability to conform to the bumps/depressions due to their low pressure gave a bit of traction and kept the bike from washing out.
Eventually, I started using the trails as more of a suggestion and went into “dune buggy/off piste” mode. With the bike’s ability to roll over pretty much anything it was pointed at, I had a ball swooping through the trees and over fallen logs/rocks. Some of the more technical obstacles which would normally be tricky for me on my 29’er were no problem to roll over, and the traction on the snow was excellent for cornering and climbing. Even though the temperature was in the teens, my hands stayed nice and toasty in the bar mitts. We took a break for a minute before heading home and soaked in the tranquility that is the forest on a still winter evening…hard to believe that we were ~10 miles from Boston.
This ended up being a great final ride to 2014. If you live in a place where snow/ice limits the riding season and want an alternative to endless hours on the trainer, you definitely should consider going Fat. They are even starting up a race series in New Hampshire (pretty sure they have demos available) and have a sold out race the end of the month:
http://fatbikenh.com/
https://www.facebook.com/moosebrookfatbikerace
See you on the trails!
