Gnome Fest Quattro
I just got back from the most fun weekend i’ve had mountain biking in the woods ever. I hadn’t heard of Gnome Fest until my friend Ted clued me in earlier this summer, so i missed the first 3 years of this extravaganza, but i doubt i’ll miss many more. It’s a weekend of camping and mountain biking and beer in 9 Mile Forest near Wausau, Wisconsin, and it’s a hella fun time.
We arrived at 11 pm after a late start and getting lost in town from construction detours. Luckily, the kegs donated from Central Water’s brewery were still going, and we had a fun time meeting a few people and getting settled in.
Saturday was pretty open in the morning. I think a women’s ride went out, otherwise it was just small groups of people here and there. Ted and i went out to check out the trails since i hadn’t been there before, and it had been about 3 years since his last trip (to the 24 hours of 9 mile). The trails are amazing; twisty singletrack, no big hills, but lots of whoop-de-whoops and lots of rocky sections. Technical, but fun to ride fast too. The park is set up with 16 different loops of singletrack with various fireroads and doubletrack paths connecting them together. It’s mostly well-marked, but it’s a big area, and it’s easy to spend a couple of hours exploring and getting lost without seeing the same thing twice.
After lunch, we got signed in and got our maps for the Dirt Alleycat race. This was a blast. We had 2 hours to collect 7 stickers and hit the corresponding 7 checkpoints to do the tasks at each one. Despite a 1/2 hour lost trying to find the orange stickers, we (and everyone else) collected all 7 checkpoints within the 2 hour limit. I got 2 time bonuses; one for beating Ted in a kid bike mini cyclocross race, and another for drinking a vinegar shot. After the race was prizes and schwag. We didn’t win anything for the race, but i did get a nice new bike pump in the drawing.
Then came the potluck. The potluck part was both beer and food, and you can see that people were generous with both:
Ok, this is the beer pile, but there was lots of good food too - a chili contest, and a homebrew beer contest. Both had great entries. After dinner, i tried my hand at bike polo and got totally hooked. Here’s a shot from one of the other people there, i’m in the white shirt, having just crashed again:
I think half of the bruises i got were from bike polo. I can’t wait to play it again.
After dark (and a few more beers), the Gnomebike death race began. It’s a race on 12″-wheeled kid gnome bikes, in a figure 8 course, so there was plenty of crashing. Oh yeah, and we were racing in our underwear. I lost in the first round, Ted made it to the 2nd round. A couple of guys raced totally naked, including one guy who did quite a victory dance involving the traffic cones making up the course. No pictures of that, sorry :-)
Sunday morning started nice early on, and i got a few good pictures of some of the trails before the rain started. It drizzled for a couple of hours, but it was enough to make us just pack up and head out rather than get in a morning ride. We were tired and happy and ready to sign up for next year’s edition as soon as we can. Thanks much to the Black Bike Ribbon crew for such a fun time!