The scraping sound of plastic on asphalt, vicious power sliding and whooping and hollering Saturday night will mean one thing: Captain Obvious and his Big Wheel-riding posse are on the loose on the Pearl Street Mall.
Kirk Speer
Matt "Guard Rail" Armbruster sports the appropriate safety attire for a finely tuned, gravity fueled child's toy.
VIDEO: Captain Obvious and his Big Wheel-riding posse are on the loose
Clad in gold lamé, a mask and a cape, the Captain's mission is to help raise funds for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Denver's Saint Joseph Hospital - and to provide Boulder with low-riding Big Wheel fun.
The 24th Almost-Annual Matt Armbruster Memorial Big Wheel Rally, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Republic of Boulder, 1095 Canyon Blvd., will raise money with $5 registration fees and $20 T-shirt sales. All proceeds go directly to the NICU.
While Matt Armbruster - the Captain's mild-mannered, wholly alive aerospace engineer alter-ego - is slow to admit that this is the first year the BWR actually has benefited a good cause, he will say that Saturday's event marks the first time that "it's for a better cause than shits and giggles."
The sight and sound of the sleek, red-and-yellow plastic chassis, sky blue seat back, two little black wheels in back and a single, audacious plastic wheel in front transports many of us back to smaller times, when we rode Big Wheel tricycles around the neighborhood, trying to keep pace with other tiny traffic.
But these aren't all your granddaddy's Big Wheels - Armbruster and Co. will be straddling low-ride bikes like the Razor Scream Machine that boast steel frames customized for adult sizes and needs.
Chop shop
"I made it," Armbruster says of his golden Big Wheel. "You can't find 'em anywhere, so I finally got to put my aerospace engineering to a noble challenge."
Armbruster makes bad-ass Big Wheels for sale on www.bigwheelrally.com, too. In addition to a whole slew of original Big Wheels, upgrade kits and replacement parts, eight customized models are available, with prices ranging from $129 to $254.
"I started out as a purist," Armbruster says. "I would only ride a stock Big Wheel - I'd take all 5-foot-10 of me and cram it onto a kids' Big Wheel."
But when his friends showed up for the rally driving a van with five heavily-modified, "chopped and stretched" Big Wheels strapped to the roof, they made him break his Big Wheel edge by trying a chopped-and-stretched model.
"I got on it, rode it down the street and thought, 'Whoa, that was plush,'" Armbruster says.
Now, before the rally each year, Armbruster hosts a Big Wheel tune-up, where he and a few die-hards make fine adjustments to their black-and-chrome, big-wheeled tricycles.
Some of the Big Wheel enthusiasts that he met were those who pioneered a sport that they call extreme big-wheeling (check out www.extremebigwheels.com for details). These are the brave men who drag modified Big Wheels up Lookout Mountain, point them downhill and ride.
Outfitted in motocross pants, shirts, padding and helmets, they zip past stunning views of Golden, going up on two wheels around hairpin turns and passing cars when necessary - just like any other vehicle, by moving into the other lane, facing oncoming traffic. Armbruster's speedometer has clocked them at a top speed of 36 mph.
"That seems to be the upper limit," he says. "It's all aerodynamics now."
The extreme Big Wheel team has vehicles that are even more tricked out than Captain Obvious' ride, with hit-or-miss suspensions, front tires and handlebars borrowed from bicycles, go-kart slicks for rear tires and the best accessory: a classic-sounding bicycle bell that one of the guys took from his son's tricycle.
You've never seen a confused bicyclist until you've seen two guys in their Spandex trying to ride up Lookout Mountain as four speed demons on Big Wheels pass them the other way at more than 30 mph - and one has the gall to press that little chrome lever at the bicyclists. Ring-ring!
They say they're in it to start a craze, and they almost got national attention at one point.
"We were supposed to have CBS in June," says Shane Mattox, one of the riders, "but then the Pope died."
Think of the kids
The 24th Almost-Annual Matt Armbruster Memorial Big Wheel Rally
7 p.m. Saturday
Rally begins at the Republic of Boulder, 1095 Canyon Blvd.
$5 registration, $20 T-shirts; www.bigwheelrally.com
In the early '90s, Armbruster was scheduled to go from the University of Colorado to a study abroad program in Sydney, Australia. He got to Australia, one of the first in the program to arrive. Soon, he discovered that the school in Australia wasn't planning on keeping up its end of the deal, so he came back home.
But by the time he got back to Boulder, kids had already registered for classes and he was out of luck.
"I left 95 degrees and got home to Denver at 15 below," Armbruster says. "I couldn't get any of my engineering classes. I was wait-listed for electives.
"And I thought, you know, 'I really need something to look forward to.'"
For reasons he still doesn't fully understand, Armbruster came up with the idea of the Big Wheel Rally, which has created a proud tradition of somewhere around 30 people showing up to ride low around the Pearl Street Mall. Then, last year, he got the idea to turn it into a benefit.
"In December, my best friend and his wife went to the hospital - she was having weird stomach pains," he says. "She was seven months pregnant."
It ended up being a burst appendix, which they took care of at the hospital.
"Not long after that, the contractions started," Armbruster says. "They did an emergency C-section, and their daughter Maya was born at 2 pounds."
Little Maya stayed in the NICU for the rest of her term and is now a healthy baby, Armbruster says.
"I gave the hospital a call and they put me in touch with the president of the (Saint Joseph Hospital) Foundation," Armbruster says. "The cool part is that every year they do a reunion picnic." At the picnic, NICU "graduates" - the kids that the unit helps nurture from premature birth to health - and their families gather to catch up, check in on each other's progress and have a good time.
"They were running out of funds and looking for new ways to do fund-raising," Armbruster says.
Carl Unrein, president and CEO of Saint Joseph's Hospital Foundation couldn't be more emphatic about Armbruster's help.
"People don't usually raise money for parties," Unrein says, "and this is not really a party. It's relationships, education and an opportunity for people to thank staff."
He also says that since so little is known about children who survive premature birth, it's important to stay in contact with those who do.
"We're flattered and honored that he's doing this on our behalf," Unrein says. "I know that he had a personal connection, so it's all coming together extremely well."
So, Saturday they ride.
The itinerary
The rally begins at 7 p.m. the Republic of Boulder, where interested parties may get their registration bracelets - red bracelets of the "LiveStrong" sort that say "Ride Low."
From the Republic, the band of merrymakers will scoot on to the Walrus, the West End Tavern, Old Chicago, BJ's Brewery, Styr, Catacombs, up and down six stories of parking garage at 11th and Spruce streets, then back to the Republic.
"There is a lot of power sliding, there are a few steps involved (think Sundown Saloon), there are going to be a couple of ramps," Armbruster says. "Yeah, it's treacherous, but it's nothing you haven't already done as a kid."
He says that the police have never interfered much with the rally.
"There are a lot of things that are illegal. There's probably something they could find," Armbruster says. His only concern is that, in Colorado, bikes are considered vehicles by the law. "About ten years ago we were threatened with DUIs, but fundamentally the Big Wheel is a plastic toy."
Even if the law does come down on them, Captain Obvious has a positive outlook.
"At this point, as long as it says 'Big Wheel' in the police report, it's gonna be all right."