It all started in Vernal, Utah.
The weekend riding and camping at McCoy Flats was great great fun, but the not-so flat part of McCoy broke my bike. A Saturday afternoon crack in the chain stay of my Stumpjumer FSR and my weekend was pretty much done.
Normally, buying a new bike would a reasonable response, but a carport conversion-to-garage project was sucking up all my money and it was looking like a new full sus bike was not in the cards. It was only May and now it was looking like my summer might be done as well.
Over the next couple weeks, I considered repairing the bike, but finding someone to weld my out-of-warranty frame was proving to be a challenge.
Then a thought occurred to me: I had been looking at fat bikes and knew I could pick up a used zero sus fattie on the cheap.
Nothing is really new with a basic hard nose, hard tail fat bike. The tech is pretty much old school. While searching the classifieds, I was seeing used aluminum frame fat bikes for under a grand.
But what would I do with a fat bike in May?
I had actually started looking at fat bikes in January. I let a few great deals slipped through my grubby fingers and by April I had pretty much missed the fat bike season.
But again…what would I do with a fat bike during the summer? Take it to California and ride on the beach? Nope. I’m a Californian and, sorry, but I’m done what that state. Once I moved to Idaho—and then Utah—I found little reason to return to the Golden State. They don’t even have Grizzly Bears any more.