Saturday was a good day to ride a bike. Fortunately, there were almost 100 people that wanted to ride with me and fortunately there were three breweries that were waiting for us to show up. Riders of all abilities and from as far as Seattle, Boulder and Arizona joined us for the Beermuda Triangle Fat Tire Brewery Tour, which took us 30 miles around north Minneapolis.

Check this video!

Starting at Town Hall brewpub in the heart of the city for morning beers and brunch, we traveled up the Mississippi river and straight through the not-so-pretty part of town. The goal was to ride slow and either recruit other riders to join or to heckle them. We quickly picked up two guys that were just out for what they called a long slow day. One guy was wearing a Sierra Nevada beer jersey, so he had no excuses not to join.



After a quick park stop for a beer break, we were onto Surly Brewing Company (no affiliation with us other than we like beer, they like bikes and we're both in the same town). At Surly, Omar the owner poured us samples for 45 minutes until he then gave us a tour of the 30 barrel per batch brewhouse. Holy crap, they had a cold-pressed coffee version of their brown ale on tap especially for us that was to die for.



After this we traveled to a secret picnic spot atop a hill, where we'd stashed 150 sandwiches, chips and 7 gallons of beer. The goods lasted about 1 hour, then it was onto the next stop, Barleyjohn's brewpub. Colin, their brewer, was with us on the ride and had brewed a special Belgian beer to quench our thirst. Tasty! They had a nice patio for us to invade that was covered in hops. After a couple more pints, the natives were getting wrestle-less and started riding in circles, meaning it was time to derby and move on.



We rode through some dirt jumps and back to the heart of the city to finish the triangle at Town Hall Brewpub. Two miles from the finish, we were stopped by a cop that said we were trespassing and ordered us to turn around and go back the way we came. After about a minute of listening to this thickheaded rule enforcer, I decided to ride past him. Afterall, was he going to stop all of us? The best part was when the people in the back of the group waved at him and thanked him for letting us go. I'm quite sure he finally felt like a jerk after that.

We arrived at Town Hall with Black Sabbath blasting from my bike just in time to interrupt some couples' wedding photo session. I felt kind of bad until one of their kids ran over to me to start rocking out. Special thanks to Matt at Town Hall for opening your doors early for us, to Omar at Surly Brewing for pouring such fine liquids into our bellies, to Colin at Barleyjohn's for making the beer flow and letting us put a dent in your supply, to all the motorists that stopped and used their hands for waving instead of honking (or other), to Kenny Bloggins and Brauer Power for being the caboose all day and fixing something like 10 flat tires, to Nate for shooting bottle rockets at the people who tried to ride fast and for all your help, and to everybody who joined up and made it one of the best days on a bike ever.