Katy's Travels: Tour De Fat LA

Every year the New Belgium Brewing Company (the makers of Fat Tire and other great beers) does a summer tour of bikes, music and beer in cities all across the country. I was drinking a Fat Tire in the middle of the summer and casually noticed that the Tour De Fat as it's called would be coming to LA in October. This weekend I met up with my friend Joey and we went. It was an AWESOME day. First, there was a mile bike parade through downtown Los Angeles. About 150 of us were there, enjoying the warm beautiful day and gaining several photographs from tourists and city workers lined up along the streets, as well as glares from car drivers. We also passed by Occupy LA and rang out bike bells and waved madly.

After the bike ride, there was an afternoon of beer, music, entertainment and bike festival awesomeness. I got signed up for the LA County Bike Collation. It was great to be surrounded by the type of people who are like me and into the same things as me. After sitting in the sun, drinking and dancing all day, I was exhausted and went right home to rest for the night. It was honestly good to do something other than going out to the bars at night. Plus I got to spend time with Joey from my program one on one, which means a lot to me. I get to know people so much better in that sense, and it's been nice to get to do that more and more now that we're all falling into our patterns and grooves within the group.

So: photos! To show how awesome and beautiful the day was!

If you gave them money you got a cool little TDF 2011 licence plate for your bike. Too bad I'm super broke this year.

Before we started. Everyone was lining up and getting ready to head out.

Me and Joey! Being safe in our matching helmets!

The group of us in downtown LA, at a stoplight.

Occupy LA! We wanted to stop by at the end of the day, but we were both exhausted. Maybe this coming weekend... I want to spend some time and talk to some people if I can.

A truck full of beer.

This is a "park" in LA, I guess. I was not impressed. And I got very very sunburnt in all the unsexy ways possible: aka, farmers tan, purse strap tan, watch tan and sunglasses tan. I guess I could have been wearing socks to make it that much worse.