Bike fest rolls out 27th year of revelry

STAFF PHOTO FLIP PUTTHOFF 
Bob Cable, right, crosses Lee Creek while leading a guided ride at the Ozark Mountain Bike Festival. The 26th annual festival at Devil's Den State Park featured rides, trail seminars, a poker run and bicycling games for kids.
STAFF PHOTO FLIP PUTTHOFF Bob Cable, right, crosses Lee Creek while leading a guided ride at the Ozark Mountain Bike Festival. The 26th annual festival at Devil's Den State Park featured rides, trail seminars, a poker run and bicycling games for kids.

Mountain bikers didn't have the heart to trash a little bicycle that was donated for their reindeer games at the 2014 Ozark Mountain Bike Festival.

"This bike stands, up from the ground to the top of the seat, I'm guessing, two feet at the most," says Tim Scott, assistant superintendent of Devil's Den State Park, the festival sponsor.

He wouldn't call it a pink bike. It was "off-red."

It was Japanese. It had a rack and little fenders. And it was too adorable to die in the Huffy toss, a contest somewhat like discus throwing, somewhat like caber tossing, with a clunker bicycle as the projectile.

So on the spur of the moment, everybody agreed to spare the cutie. But they had to fill time somehow -- this festival's a laid-back weekend of fat-tire fun but it does keep a schedule -- and so the bikers improvised.

"Where the pavilions are located there's a big, straight, downhill shot," Scott says. "So they got on the bike, and they rode it to see who could coast it the farthest" -- all gravity, no pedalling.

All that to say this: This weekend, along with the usual guided trail rides, the poker run and the 6-mile pedal in the dark, the 27th annual Ozark Mountain Bike Festival includes a "mini bicycle coaster challenge" -- featuring one small, off-red bike.

Park interpreter Adam Leslie says, "To be honest, it is a really cool little bike."

FLING

Scott was 35 during the park's first mountain bike fest, and today "I just turned ... well, I wouldn't say just turned, 62," he says. So presumably he can be trusted when he predicts about 200 cyclists and their families will attend the fest even though Sunday is Easter.

"Saturday's our biggest day," he notes. Most years, when the three-day schedule rolls around to Sunday morning's two rides, "everybody's pretty 'wore out,' and so they're not well attended like the Saturday rides are."

Longtime attendees know what to expect: muddy trails. Also, while guided rides (beginning with one at 2:30 p.m. Friday) will go fast or slow depending on the professed skill level of whoever shows up, most are aimed at novices. Every fall, Devil's Den conducts the Northwest Arkansas Mountain Bike Championships, with racing; but springtime is for learning and play.

Saturday will once again include the "Ladies Only Ride" (sorry, broads and gals) as well as two skill-building rides that are called workshops, one for intermediates at 10 a.m. Saturday and one for beginners at 1 p.m.

The usual kids course will be set up behind Campsite 14 in Area A for anyone to try, but beginning at 2:30 p.m. Saturday play will be supervised and include bike-handling tips from Ryan Bratton, a trials rider. Kids can ride along a "skinny" (a narrow rail), roll over a

teeter-totter, weave around cones and see how low they can duck under a bar (limbo, with a bicycle).

NEW THIS YEAR

"This year, we will be adding a Gravel Grinder that will be led by the Northwest Arkansas Gravel Grinders," Leslie says. Intermediate and advanced riders can gather at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the amphitheater near Area E. "This 25-mile route was used as the course for the mountain bike race in 1990. This will be a challenging but scenic course, well worth the effort."

The Poker Run returns at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and is open to all ages. Participants will pedal to five checkpoints along the Fossil Flats Trail, collecting a playing card at each stop. Back at the park pavilion, they can turn in their poker hand to see what they might have won.

And nearby, at 6 p.m., the big kids reindeer games get underway on the playground. Besides the mini bicycle coaster challenge, adults will play at limbo, take the bunny hop contest and, yes, toss a junker.

Scott has a bike suitable for the tossing, but he's a little worried that 62-year-old cyclists who've been trail-riding 27 years could hurt themselves just picking it up. "We're looking for a lighter one."

TAKE A TURN

At 7 Saturday evening, the hamburger cookout and potluck will once again include ice cream, and participants are to supply their own bowl or cup and a spoon. Also, they'll help crank the ice cream maker.

"It's a 5-gallon ice cream maker. When it starts getting stiff, it's hard to crank," Scott says. Relief might be on the way in the form of a bicycle-powered ice cream maker, but "until it comes through the door, I haven't seen it yet -- but I'm looking forward to maybe seeing it."

This is just vanilla ice cream, right?

"No! No," Scott says. "This year we'll probably use just a little bit of strawberries and Oreo cookies."

Or maybe, Leslie says, "This year could be the year that we actually make pickle pop ice cream."

More information is available by calling (479) 761-3325 or emailing tim.scott@arkansas.gov or adam.leslie@arkansas.gov.

ActiveStyle on 03/30/2015

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