TrojanHorse

You should invite him to your shop on his way through NY (assuming you're still working by 2017, ) - we need somebody to lay eyes on this budding train wreck.

Beachgrad05

Got that beat. I have not ridden in 2weeks! Travel and sore shoulder from I don't know what....I should be so ready for Cool Breeze!

TrojanHorse

So you'll be well rested. Excellent!

bassjones

Oh look, he made Salon - ?Fat Guy? biking across America: Why we believe only thin people deserve to be loved - Salon.com

indyfabz

And a Tasty Freeze.

Haff

That was an interesting article. I have to wonder though.... did Salon seek him out, or did he seek Salon out?

Right about now I would expect the media to pick up on his lack of progress. He has become well enough known that its time for an "investigative team" to take a look and call everything to question. The best part about a media investigation is there is almost never any actual investigation, and certainly not a need for proof. they just need to ask teh questions in a way that shocks people and gets ratings.

"Is Mr Fat guy taking the trusting public for all its worth?"

"This grandmother gave him her weekly food money, lets see how he plans to take everyone elses money too"

"He says he is estranged from his wife, but an insider says she is actually a secret Kenyan with no birth certificate. We'll present and you decide"

Its only a matter of time.

billyymc

Someone with a facebook account please tell him to "STFU, HTFU, and ride your gd bike SOMEWHERE!!"

Has anyone actually seen him, or a picture or a video of him, actually riding a bike?

Rhites

You're right. How could I forget about the Tasty Freeze? Across the street from the Tasty Freeze is where Eric ran Hungry Hooties(his self given nick name)Pizza. Another business that his parents sank God knows how much money into and never saw so much as a dime return on. He was into it all the time with the Tasty Freeze crew. Well,the whole two months Hungry Hooties Pizza was open. Territory turf war if I remember correctly.

JohnX

Im still wondering about the bicycle choice. Then I remembered LHT's are only rated up to 300-350. So maybe that has something to do with it.

Mithrandir

That's a conservative estimate. I've ridden my LHT up to 440 pounds with no issue. Those things are tanks.

Mithrandir

That being said, I can pretty much guarantee you that the LHT is a stronger bike than that piece of junk GT they gave him. Hell, they even gave him a suspension fork, which is like the second worst idea you can have when building a bike for an uber-clyde.

Fahrradfahrer

Why is that? Because there will be too much weight on it, so you either have to make it so hard that it's essentially not a suspension anymore, or it will otherwise be compressed all the way?

RollingBlubber

The bike they gave him is total trash (it's maybe $400 retail) and with that front fork and tractor seat I'm shocked he even bothers to sit on it.

billyymc

If the fork has a lockout he would be fine. If he actually rode it.

There is also a pic on his FB showing the bike with a rigid fork, so maybe the shop replaced it for him. Either way it was pretty generous of them. He should be able to flip it on his hometown Craigslist for $100.

RollingBlubber

He must have deleted it because I don't see it.

billyymc

Ah...you're right, I didn't look close enough and thought I saw a different for on it.

From what I've seen there is not a single picture or video of him actually on any bike. Not one. Seems like that would be one of the first pics he'd put up. I doubt he's ridden 100 yards.

Mithrandir

In general, the lower-end bicycles have really cheap forks. Ever notice how every single Walmart bike has supension on it? It's become a "bullet point" feature because people think suspension = good = comfort and don't really put any further thought into it. It's gotten to a point where you can't really find cheap hybrid/mountain bikes with rigid forks anymore.

Problem is, these cheap forks are cheap for a reason; one they assume nobody will ever actually ride them a lot. Two, they assume fat people don't ride. So the moving parts in the suspension fork can easily break down if this guy were to ride it for any extended period of time.

Now if this was a decent bike brand, then perhaps the fork would be alright. But the GT of our yesteryears is no more, they got bought by Pacific last decade and they're now shoddy made-in-china bikes, along the lines of Schwinn and Mongoose.

I wouldn't trust it at his weight. I wouldn't even trust it at my weight. The fork fails while you're going down a hill and bam, game over.

beakersbike

Doesn't that kind of assume him riding to the top of the hill to begin with?

Little Darwin

Ok. I have decided to add some positive aspects to my communication on this matter.

Without knowing the route he took, I decided to just use car mapping on Mapquest to show Eric's progress so far. The following is a screen snip of Eric's progress since leaving Martha's Vineyard on about June 25th. I had Mapquest map from Woods Hole to Newport, then zoomed out to get the scope of the entire trip (basically the continental US)

Progress as of today (with no reported progress for a week or so)



Go Eric Go!!!

indyfabz

To me, that is one of the most telling aspect of all of this.

When I get home I want to look at that bike photo again and read his FB posts about acquiring it. Something doesn't seem to jibe with the timing, especially when you look at the journal entries on his web site. On 7/29 he was describing how he was in New Bedford, MA. But I thought another post had him in Newport by then.

RollingBlubber

He's an unreliable narrator and a terrible writer, he can't be bothered with details.

I really would love for Newport Bicycle and the other people that have gotten involved with this farce to talk about their experience with Eric Hites and this Fat Guy Across America but living in Rhode Island scam. I'm starting to think Eric has gotten himself into the same situation the "Press Your Luck" guy did back in the day - no exit strategy.

indyfabz

MapQuest? Do you still use a Texas Instruments calculator too? Goolge Maps has a bike route option. One journal entry mentions "state route 6," but I suspect he meant U.S. 6.

billyymc

Pacific owns Cannondale too. GT does not equal Schwinn and Mongoose. There may be some lower end GT bikes being sold in big box sporting good stores, but pretty sure you aren't finding them in Wallymart.

I wouldn't qualify this as low end or shoddy: Sensor Carbon Pro - Trail - Mountain - Bikes

Willbird

To put $15,000 in donations in perspective we did a fund raiser at work for "boomerang backpacks" to send food home with kids who might not eat all weekend otherwise. $15,000 would fund that program for 150 kids. Or it could go to something like this.

TrojanHorse

What a poor article! Did they even interview him? Now it's a societal problem, not FatGuy's problem that he's overweight and has a poor self-image? Btw, Salon, FatGuy is the one who thinks his life will improve if he succeeds in this quixotic quest. It's not his laziness and poor decision making that made him fat, it's his fat that made him lazy and killed his decision making. Right.

Just hire a "body image coach" and all will be well. Good grief.