Event manager Tom Schuler remembers sitting inside Grumpy’s Saloon in Davenport, IA, during a rain delay at the 2014 Quad Cities Criterium when he saw a soaking wet guy with no helmet on a fat bike loaded with panniers rip down 11th Street on the closed course. “Even though it was pouring out, every time he came around for another hot lap, it seemed like more people on fat bikes or mountain bikes had joined him,” Schuler told me today when I called him after getting home to Wauwatosa, WI. “It was crazy, but that party atmosphere is part of what makes the Quad Cities Criterium so fun. The area mountain bike group, QCFORC, has an amazing party right on the course.”
That crazy guy on a fat bike was Dustin Collison. He and his friends from Davenport started the Quad Cities Faterium that rainy day, and it has been drawing a field of about 40 fat-bikers to the start line of the venerable 60-year-old Iowa race series ever since. I wasn’t able to make it down to Davenport this year, but we got some nice photos from Scott Nagel, and Dustin emailed me a bit more about his rain-soaked inspiration for the Faterium. “I think it was the first year Tom took over the race in 2014. I showed up with my Fat Bike decked out for cross-country touring as I was about to kick off the summer with the first-ever River to River bicycle cruise on the Iowa segment of Historic Hwy 6.”
“It started to rain, and most people were trying to take shelter. I knew that I was going to have to deal with rain on my bike trip across Iowa once, Illinois 1.5 times, and Wisconsin twice, that summer, so I embraced it and did hot laps of the course until the rain cleared. It was awesome. The rain felt great. It did not take long for my friends to join me. The 2016 video below from WQAD 8 ABC gives a feel for the race vibe and how the event got going.
“I own dciPrint in Davenport and bikeroute.life, and do a lot of printing for the Route 6 Tourist Association, so I converted the motorcycle cruise art for cycling. To start the trip, I was actually picked up in Davenport, Iowa, where I live, and driven out west in a 1964 police car driven by an active police officer. I started my cruise at the same time as the motorcycle cruise. At that time, I had never heard of anyone touring on a fat bike to the extent I did that year in 2014.
Like most fat bike criteriums, the race in Davenport is more about grins than wins, but feel free to kit up, put on your race face, and bring your Berd/Hed/carbon winter steed to lay down some peloton pain next year. My buddy Tom Schuler is turning over the reins of the Quad Cities Criterium, so I plan on going next year for sure. If the Faterium and on-course parties were not enough to tempt you to spend Memorial Day in Iowa, the infamous Snake Alley Criterium in Burlington should be on your bucket list and tip the scales.
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