I got my weekend started at the early hour of 7:15 am yesterday. I’m not sure if yesterday was technically Saturday, but now that I’m no longer working at the restaurant for the summer, every day is pretty much a weekend. Who am I kidding, all my days were like weekends before. Anyways, my New Zealand triathlon buddy Geoff, heard about this great little bike to work event going on in Boulder/the rest of the nation. To get people excited about bike commuting, the city put up like 200 breakfast stations for cyclists and pedestrians walking their way to work. Free food. I repeat:
Free.
Food.
All you can eat.
Free.
Food.
America.
Sex.
Drugs.
Rock &Roll.
Kennettron5000.
Free food.
Fuck yeah.
Geoff and I rolled out of my driveway and crossed the busy street of Arapahoe, and low and behold there was a random breakfast table set up with yogurt parfaits! Not even a quarter mile from my garage. This was going to be easier than taking candy from a dead baby. And we came prepared. We’d brought backpacks.
Breakfast burritos were next. Note: this picture may or may not have been taken during the National Crit last Friday.
After that was bagels, salmon lox cream cheese, fruit, juice, bananas, oranges, etc. Basic bullshit.
A few minutes later we were munching muffins, just the tops. Pumpkin and walnut? I’m not sure. We started on our second cups of coffee as we sat on a bench in the shade. It was already 90 degrees and not yet eight o’clock. The next place better have some cold smoothies!!!
The smoothies had to wait, for our next stop was another spread of bagels and cream cheese and hot coffee at Performance Bicycles. I saw my friend Will’s decked out Sprinter van sitting in it’s usual spot in the parking lot, in front of Performance where he works. Will was probably still asleep. Geoff and I had already consumed more food than any other human beings in Colorado.
Our next stop required a little more pedaling than the previous few places, but it did not disappoint. It was the Dushanbe Tea House breakfast station in downtown. They were serving chai tea, a hot egg and potato dish, and scones with jam. No time to mingle, we had a strict deadline. The breakfast stations closed down at around 9:30.
Not even a full block away was a fitness studio that gave us some free passes and miniature spinach, egg, and ham panini sandwiches. Geoff was starting to hurt. I was holding strong. I’d been training for this day my entire life. Bike riding+eating massive quantities of food…I was born for this shit.
We grabbed some water bottles from a person in front of my old workplace, the Boulderado Hotel. Water bottles? That’s it? Cheapskates.
Stop eight, not counting the Boulderado water bottles, was a real good one. I didn’t even get to try everything. They had miniature pancakes, miniature parfaits, Izze soda, breakfast burritos, hot chicks handing out the burritos, Skratch Labs electrolyte powder (plants love that ish), and smoothies!
And directly across the street…more smoothies!!
Farther down Pearl street, the Google building had more smoothies, bagels, fruit, coffee, etc.
I was no longer hungry by now, and had mainly just been loading my trusty Shimano shoe bag full of goodies for later. I had to be able to pedal my bike hard at some point that day.
The last and 11th stop on our journey was Whole Foods…the grand finale. This was no quick breakfast snack table, this was a full on meal. We’re talking pancakes, sausage, egg frittata, oatmeal, fruit, berries, nuts, yogurt, coffee, and condoms. Yeah, condoms. No joke. I asked how popular the XLs were. The girl handing them out said not that popular, Boulder is pretty white.
Food bag that helped feed me for the rest of the day.
Geoff feeling pretty ill. Geedy bugger.
After two hours of free-loading, I had to carry my oats back home for another day. Geoff moaned and groaned on the living room floor for a half hour before he had to leave for a swim workout. I hung around until mid day before heading out on my five and a half hour ride in the hot, dry, smoky mountains. The Flagstaff fire from the day before had miraculously been put under control over night at 40% containment with no new growth expected, but a new thunderstorm brewed two more lightning-strike fires while I was on my ride. I ended the ride down in Denver at Tricia’s house, where I was going to hang out and do the cruiser ride with her and Morgan that night. The ride involved making homemade V-necks, riding to the capital plaza, and navigating the Circle of Death: a tight pack of drunken, terrible bike handlers that sped around in circles in front of a loud rock band. It was awesome. People crashed, pedicabs went the wrong direction, someone threw a glass bottle in the circle that was immediately run over and smashed, a girl threw a punk BMX biker on his ass when he ran into her, double decker tall bikes and high wheel bikes amazingly maneuvered the chaos without incident, dance circles formulated, everyone was in some sort of costume, and we all had a grand old merry time without even one police officer present to ruin it. I was amazed at the turnout. Every Wednesday this goes on with easily over 1,000 people participating. With the bike to work breakfast festival and the Cruiser Ride, I got to experience two cool ways people are getting excited about riding bikes. The more people on bikes and out of cars the better.
My shirt had a picture of lightning striking a forest on fire and a person below facing the other direction ignoring it and watching their plasma screen. Very few people thought it was funny.
KENNETT PETERSON 
free ice cream in colryt