Beery bike tour heads eastward

Now this is a bike tour the Eye would like to wheel into.

The first Tour de Fat, sponsored by Fort Collins’ New Belgium Brewery, got off to a rolling start in Seattle Sept. 2, the beginning of a seven-week odyssey for cyclists riding the classic, fat-tired “cruiser” bicycles that grace the labels of New Belgium’s most popular ale, Fat Tire.

The six-city tour promotes New Belgium (of course) and raises money for nonprofit bike groups along the way. About 200 collectors gathered at Marymoor Park in Seattle to kick off the event.

“We’ve got some awesome, eclectic collectors in this city,” organizer David Kemp said in a telephone interview. “Bike collectors are cool people. They’re big showoffs, basically.”

Kemp and fellow New Belgium employee Brian Simpson will ride the distance, taking Tour de Fat from Seattle to Missoula, Mont.; Lawrence, Kansas; Austin, Texas; Flagstaff, Ariz., and wrap up the event Oct. 21 on the brewery’s front lawn in Fort Collins.

There, participants in the final festival can enjoy such events as the Cruiser Olympics, the gas-tank toss, the beer-in-hand barrel race and the paper boy challenge — a tribute, Kemp said, “to all the newsboys out there who have risked their lives to bring us our reading pleasure.”

Cruise by New Belgium Brewery’s Web site at www.newbelgium.com for more information.

If the Eye weren’t so fat and tired, we’d be riding along.

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