The 2007 Bridges of the Butte 24-Hour Townie Tour was an unqualified success for both organizers and riders. Last year, sixty-plus riders participated. This year 106 riders pedaled around and around on the 2.25 mile course circumnavigating the Town of Crested Butte. Everyone we talked with had fun. Thanks to Ella Fahrlander and the rest of the Adaptive Sport Center team for holding a unique fun event.
On the map at right, "A" indicates the Adaptive Sports Center base camp just outside the Center for the Arts. "B" is the Alpineer. We spent time here replacing blown out ancient tires - and send a big thanks to bike shop manager Mark Cram who, well after closing time helped us mount some new rubber. "C" shows where we detoured to our friend Patricia Dawson's house. When we appeared outside she lowered a bag of wonderful brownies down from her deck on a rope. Mmmm. Thanks Patricia!
Four people rode all twenty four hours; those guys are animals. The flyingcracker team rode from 3 pm to 8 pm, again from 10:45 pm to 3:45 am, and finally from 1:30 pm to 3 pm Sunday. The GPS total showed we completed twenty-three laps for 50+ miles in just over seven hours of riding time. Luckily this ride is much more about the experience than the distance or time.
Perhaps the best aspect of this years event was the night riding, conducted under a full moon, a first for the BB24TT.
We rode a not-too-stable antique tandem courtesy of Gay & John Johnson, CB South neighbors, friends and fans of flyingcracker. Note the green electronic gizmos in the rear wheel. We'll explain that later.
Church Lady gives Jim 24-Hour Harlan a sermon on the dangers of biking at night.
Mrs. Flyingcracker riding down by the Rec Path in the early evening.
Everyone had a great sense of fashion. Check out those pink fender-matching pumps.
The last lap Sunday afternoon...
...ending at the Brick Oven, with riders in all states of (un)dress.
Bob took a hug for the whole fire station team.
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We had some special electronics wizardry on our rear wheel during the night portion of the ride. Each image above displayed for ten rotations of the back wheel then switched to the next image for ten rotations, etc. The photos above are 1/2 second exposures of the rotating back wheel shot in a dim room. Each of the green circuit boards seen in the tandem photo contains sixty bright blue LEDs, thirty on each side.
The Atmel AT-Tiny2313 microprocessor uses a Hall-Effect sensor to detect a strong magnet on the seat stay and determine the wheel speed. Then it triggers the LEDs to illuminate at the appropriate time to produce a "persistence of vision" (POV) effect. These cool devices were designed by LadyAda but built by hand in the flyingcracker electronics laboratory.
We also used twenty feet of 2.5mm EL-wire for a flashing lightning bolt effect on the tandem frame (seen dimly above). Electroluminescent (EL)-Wire is like thin, cool, bendable glow tubing. By far the best EL-wire display this year was a green-wire-outlined townie by Damian (sorry no photo!) He did a great job of following the contours of his old townie - it looked like a green ghost bike floating down the street. Our EL-wire came from Cool Neon in San Francisco. Eight rechargeable AA batteries drove the wire all night long.