FrostBike Shenanigans: Surly Pugsley Races

Just outside of QBP’s headquarters in Bloomington, MN hoards of industry bike geeks huddled around a roaring fire on a frozen pond for the annual FrostBike Pugsley races. During the day, FrostBike is more or less a smaller version of Interbike that is open to bike dealers across the world who buy inventory from one of the most known bicycle wholesale distributors around. The show is filled with tons of valuable education for dealers and a smaller, but more intimate show experience where dealers can get their hands on the newest product just in time for the coming season.

Like just about any bike show however, it’s definitely not all work and no play.

Photos of a good time after the jump.

At one point, the guys from Sweet Bikes in Canton Michigan, got in on the action with their Fat Mother Trucker tandem custom Moonlander. Adding the tandem to the mix definitely upped the craziness a bit. More on this bike soon.

Pugsleys. Say what you want about fat bikes being a silly trend, or whatever – they are ridiculously easy to have fun on. Isn’t that what matters?

Snowballs, shovel fulls of snow, beer cans, flaming beer boxes, people, all could and were used to pelt riders as they dared the course.

Tom and Sarah Swallow from Swallow Bicycle Works tried their hand at racing. Tom was left with some snow in his beard as a parting gift.

Did I mention how big the fire was?

Due to the course’s figure 8 layout, the cross over led to plenty of near misses.

Plenty of carnage as well.

If you “won” a race (no one was really keeping track), you raced in the final heat to earn a chance to win some sweet yellow Surly Clown Shoe fat bike rims. The catch? You had to eat an entire bag of some crazy jelly fish from Asia. Also, you had to keep it down for at least 5 minutes. As mentioned at the beginning of the night, you might not want  to win. Kaolin from Flat Tire bike shop in Cave Creek, AZ was the unfortunate winner but he approached the challenge like a pro.

Down the hatch.

And right back up. But he persisted.

After putting some of the jelly fish that were regurgitated to the ground, back in his mouth – Kaolin choked them all down and won his rims. Champion.

With the first day of Frostbike in the books, check back tomorrow as we kick off all of our FrostBike coverage with a Bikerumor Exclusive.