Bike & Hike 2008--Arrival & Day 1

This past weekend was my third annual Girls Weekend with four of my high school friends: Allison, Claire, Erin F. and Erin J. The previous years we've visited Los Angeles and Philadelphia. This year we made our way to Colorado where Erin F. currently resides and had some fun biking and hiking.

We arrived Thursday evening and got settled in Erin's apartment in Fort Collins. Her husband D.J. and dog, Pinga were very tolerant of all us ladies invading their space. On Friday we woke up and had breakfast at a great little Cajun place called Lucile's and then headed to the Fort Collins Bike Library. This little establishment just opened the beginning of April and is a non-profit who checks out bikes to individuals for up to a week for FREE. This helps promote exercise and being more environmentally conscious. Fort Collins is quite flat and has many bike lanes and trails. It's an extremely bike-friendly city.



And wouldn't you know it that the minute we walked into the Bike Library, a Denver NBC9 news guy walked in right behind us. We checked out the last four bikes available and we made the news broadcast in the whole state!! Here is the video of the news spot (Erin F. will never live down her "Totally Fort Collins" comment!):



After the excitement of being filmed for the news and looking like total idiots to the entire state of Colorado, we headed out for a bike 'n brew tour of a couple of Fort Collins' breweries. I was a little nervous about this whole biking thing. I haven't been on a bike since I got my driver's license. I'll let you do the math, but that's a LOT of YEARS! I was a little wobbly for a minute or two and then it all came back to me...."just like riding a bike".

We made our way to the New Belgium Brewery. We sat and sampled four beers each for free (about a pint in total). We liked many and some were not so great. The inside of the "Liquid Room", as they call it, has chairs and stools all made from bicycle rims. Their whole theme is bicycles. The second beer they produced was called Fat Tire (ever hear of it?). The name comes from the owner Jeff's experience in Belgium when he was learning how to brew beer. He brought his mountain bike over (back then a novelty outside the United States) and all the locals kept asking him, "What's up with the funny bike with fat tires?". Besides this story, the brewery itself is all about sustainability and being earth-friendly. It uses wind power from Wyoming, energy-efficient methods for brewing the beer, they use the brew machines to rewarm excess water instead of having to heat it from scratch. Anyhoo, the tour was incredibly interesting to hear all the ways they incorporate earth-friendly behaviors into their process. If you're ever in Fort Collins, I highly recommend a trip to the New Belgium Brewery and if you can, try to get Burny for your tour guide. He was great! He's even written a book!




After a great time at New Belgium we got back on the bikes and headed to the O'Dell Brewery. We enjoyed another round of samples, but did not tour this one. Really, not much could live up to the New Belgium tour. As we were leaving O'Dell, we realized Erin's J's bike had a flat tire. After many discussions about the best way to solve the problem, two nice biking gentlemen noticed us and helped us patch the tire. After that we were on our way. We stopped at a coop for a quick snack and then headed back to the Bike Library to return our bikes.




That evening we had dinner at a restaurant called 3 Margaritas which had a Don Cuco's feel to it (for anyone familiar with the Glendale, CA establishment). The food was good and we enjoyed meeting one of Erin F's friends, Ellie. The dinner concluded what was a very fun, relaxing day!