Spring Break
'Tall bike buy' brings smiles to the road [VIDEO]
Kaeli West
Issue date: 5/11/09 Section: News
Ringing his silver bell 10 feet from the pavement, "the tall bike guy" coasts eastbound along Laurel Street as pedestrians cheer on what can only be described as a one-man parade.
A customer on the porch of Woody's Tavern gives a thumbs up to the man on the behemoth bike as five teenagers skateboarding in the opposite direction nod coolly, saying, "Sick ride," "Sweet" and "What's up?"
As the tall bike guy approaches a stoplight that threatens to break his momentum and balance, he sets his foot on the bed lip of a red pickup truck, whose passenger immediately leans out the window and says, "Do a wheelie."
Fifteen yards ahead, the light turns green and the tall bike guy kicks away from the truck, pops a wheelie and after a laugh from the truck, moves down Laurel Street to be greeted with more double-takes, smiles and waves.
There are a handful of oversized, circus-like bikes roaming around Fort Collins, so no one person can stake claim to handle "the tall bike guy."
But today, just north of campus, the tall bike guy is Silas Siegrist, a junior CSU student.
'High Society'
Though his bike is most often seen parked at his apartment next to the Rio Grande Restaurant in Old Town, Siegrist says he enjoys riding throughout the community and from time to time with the other members of the tall bike squad that call themselves members of "high society."
"High society," Siegrist says, is a sort of off-the-cuff identifier for those who ride tall bikes of all frame shapes and sizes, bringing smiles to people going through the motions of their day.
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