FuzzyBrew

The Tour de Fat is about to embark on a 13-city U.S. tour and will be making its first-ever stop in Nashville on July 9.

Tour de Fat, sponsored by New Belgium Brewing Company, makers of Fat Tire,  is a traveling bike festival. Its goal is to spread the good word about the “positive societal offerings of the bicycle,” and features a costumed bicycle parade, New Belgium beer, music, food and more.

The event, which is free, will take place at Centennial Park in Nashville.

Registration starts at 9 a.m., with the 5-mile bike parade beginning at 10 a.m. (Costumes encouraged.)

The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. More details are here.

The event will benefit the Sound Forest, Walk/Bike Nashville and Ride for Reading.

Here’s the full list of cities on the Tour de Fat calendar:

June 25 – Durham, NC, Diamond View Park
July 9 – Nashville, TN, Centennial Park
July 16 – Chicago, IL, Palmer Square
July 23 – Minneapolis, MN, Loring Park
July 30 – Milwaukee, WI, Humboldt Park
August 20 – Boise, ID, Ann Morrison Park
September 3 – Ft. Collins, CO, Civic Center Park
September 10 – Denver, CO, City Park
September 24 – San Francisco, CA, Golden Gate Park
October 1 – San Diego, CA, Balboa Park
October 8 – Los Angeles, CA, L.A. Historic Park
October 15 – Tempe, AZ, Tempe Town Lake
October 22 – Austin, TX, Fiesta Garden

Two-thirds of the FuzzyBrew crew, their better halves and a few friends joined 1,500 Mid-Southerners on a 17-mile tour of mostly Midtown Memphis.

The occasion was the Midnight Classic Bike Tour, an event that benefits Meritan, a local charity that, among other things, finds foster families for children with special needs, provides job retraining for seniors and trains those who are visually impaired.

I was impressed with the community buy-in. With so many folks participating, we were sent off in small waves, with a bicycling escort leading each wave. Every major intersection had police directing traffic in our favor and scores of volunteers manned the turns to make sure we didn’t get lost, and to hoot and holler and cheer us on.

Of course, beer was involved. The ride started at midnight, but the party started around 10 pm in Poplar Plaza. Local band Venus Mission got the evening started with some jams, and we wandered over to Buffalo Wild Wings to down a couple Dos Equis Amber and watch the UFC 118 rematch of BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar (Edgar won by decision).

We made it back to the party about 1:30 am, where riders were served fresh fruit, pretzels, delicious Gibson’s Donuts, and of course free New Belgium Fat Tire (really, what else would they serve?).

Brew after biking is awesome. It was a great event, one FuzzyBrew plans to do again next year, though we might preregister this time to save a little beer money.