GTDRI Stories: Fat Fargo

I ran the same header for 2015 as I had for '14.

  "The GTDRI Stories" is a series telling the history, untold tales, and showing the sights from the run of Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitationals. This series will run on Sundays. Thanks for reading!

While I had cemented the idea of running the same course as the previous year for the tenth GTDRI, I waffled on the bike choice for the better part of three months. However, a certain development in the 27.5" wheeled marketplace sort of set off a choice that I did not see coming for the bike that I ended up using more than any other for gravel in 2015. 

Then there was the injury. Not the truck hitting me either! No, this was a multiple hit injury that I sustained over the course of two years, but was really amplified in the Winter of 2014-15. 

The "Fat Fargo" at the DK200 (Image by A Andonopoulous)

First- The injury was caused by multiple crashes while mountain biking on my left shoulder. It seemed that if I lost it on the mountain bike, I went down on my left side. That got a bit annoying, but then I biffed it hard on my Fargo, dumping myself on my left side on concrete. I fell so hard I thought I broke something. Finally, to cap it all off I slipped on some ice in Winter and body slammed myself - you guessed it  - on my left side and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. 

The following year, 2015, I was relegated to using a handlebar with a lot of sweep/flare like a Midge Bar or the Cowchipper, which came out in the Summer of 2015. The Luxy Bar was another one I could tolerate well. However; it was not without a dull, aching pain that I've had to deal with off and on ever since those days. 

The bike choice was also dictated by WTB's introduction of the "mid-fat" tire, the Trailmaster 27.5 X 2.8" tire. That tire was sent to me to test and I mounted them on some wheels I built with Velocity Blunt 35's and Chris King hubs. Those wheels got passed around to various bikes because the idea WTB had was that you'd slap these into a 29"er and have really fat, voluminous tires to ride. This eventually led to my using the wheels on my Fargo Gen 2 bike which then became known as "Fat Fargo". This pre-dated Salsa Cycles' introduction of their own "plus-sized" wheels in a Fargo by at least a year or more. 

The first outing for the "Fat Fargo" was the 2015 DK200 where it ended up being an ideal choice with which to deal with a wet, muddy 200 mile course. I made it 158 miles that day before I missed the last checkpoint by two minutes. 

Me (in red) bombing a hill at Odin's (Image by W. Kilburg)

The next outing was at Odin's Revenge, where once again, the bike seemed like the obvious choice and it did me really well until I bonked spectacularly later into the event. 

While I had been originally wanting to use the Tamland Two, this Fargo had lower gearing, a better, more comfortable seated position, and those ginormous tires which made mincemeat of mud, grit, and dusty. loose patches of dirt. 

I was also contemplating using the Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross also, but I am glad I didn't as that bike was a troublesome mess on loose, higher speed downhills and all my events were rife with things like that which I attended in 2015. 

So, it was neither the BMC or the Tamland. It was the Fat Fargo. I have to say that 2015 was one of my best riding years ever, despite the injury, and much of that was due to this bike. But I sold it in 2016. Why?

Like many people that sell good things, I needed the money more than I needed that bike sitting around. Also, the wheels ended up on my Fisher/Trek Sawyer single speed, so the Fat Fargo ceased to exist anyway. I could have built new wheels, but like I said, I needed money more than I needed that bike, so it went away. 

But that Fat Fargo had quite a run. DK200, Odin's, the GTDRI. All crazy rides that were almost perfect, but only the GTDRI that year was really a success in terms of getting a complete ride in. And even then, I technically sagged the last 5 or six miles. But whatever.... 

Anyway, this was the year of the "Fat Fargo" and along with the shoulder injury, the wheels I had to test really made 2015 that year. 

Next: The Tenth GTDRI