Luke Hsiao and CJ Maxwell did not set out to build a festival. They set out to ride.
It started with a cargo van. CJ's dad's company van, borrowed without exactly asking, loaded with Onewheels, and pointed toward North Carolina for FloatLife Fest. CJ had also recently purchased his first Onewheel on his wife's credit card, a detail his wife may or may not have known about at the time.
They drove. They rode. They had the kind of experience that reorganizes your priorities.
"We had just the most amazing experience," Luke said. "That whole week we were just like, what is this world that we just experienced?"
They drove home and started building something. That something became Lemonade Float Fest, now in its fourth year and, in 2026, an official stop on the USA FLT National Championship Circuit.
The Competition
Lemonade Float Fest is not a manufactured race venue. It is Reveille Peak Ranch, thousands of acres of red dirt trail in Burnet, Texas, and the competition is built around what the land actually offers.
The centerpiece is six timed off-road segments spread across the ranch. Riders hit each segment individually, racing against the clock, with cumulative time across all six determining the overall score. It is a format that rewards consistency as much as raw speed. One bad segment does not end your day, but every second counts across the full set.
After dark, the competition shifts. The moonlight race runs a separate course and carries a different energy, a race that doubles as a festival moment, fast enough to matter and loose enough to be one of the weekend's highlights.
Sunday brings the mass start excursion, the weekend's most cinematic format. All classes compete, with waves released in succession starting with the pros. The course stretches across the ranch terrain, and the gap between a clean line and a costly mistake opens up fast when the clock is running and the field is spread across real off-road terrain.
Divisions cover the full competitive spectrum: Pro Men, Pro Women, Amateur Men, Amateur Women, Novice Men, Novice Women, Teens, and Groms. Every level of rider has a class to race in and championship points to chase.
Reveille Peak Ranch
Luke found the venue the way he finds most things, by riding.
He was searching for places to ride around Austin when he came across Reveille Peak Ranch. He and the owner are both Aggies. That helped. After the first festival, the owner's grandkids came out and rode. The relationship has grow from there.
Jump lines, a boat jump, a truck jump, Spider Mountain chairlift next door, fifty-plus miles of trail network. Luke called it Disneyland for float riders. The six competition segments are carved from that same terrain, which means the course is not designed to be a course. It is just the ranch, and the ranch is the point.
Meals on One Wheels
Before there was a festival, there was something quieter.
Luke noticed something on those early group rides through downtown Austin. They were out there on expensive machines, and everywhere around them were people who were struggling. He posted in the group one day: let's make some sandwiches.
The first run, they made around 200 bag lunches and rode through downtown distributing them. CJ added drives for local animal shelters, thirty-pound bags of dog food delivered to the Austin pet shelter. Meals on One Wheels spread from there to other communities.
It became one of the things the Austin Onewheel Club was known for, and it explains something about what Lemonade Float Fest is trying to be beyond the competition results.
Why They Do It
Neither Luke nor CJ is making money on this. Every dollar that comes in goes back into the event, into the next year, into improvements.
What they get instead is the end of the event, after the tents come down and the crowd clears out, when it is just the two of them in a field that was full of people a few hours ago.
"Me and Luke kind of have a small crying fest after the festival," CJ said. "We kind of look back at it. It's all torn down. All the people are gone. And we just kind of sit there."
That moment is what they are chasing. Not a return on investment. The feeling that they gave someone what FloatLife Fest gave them the first time they showed up.
"I really feel like that's what I'm really chasing after every time we do this," Luke said. "I want everyone to experience what me and CJ got to experience at the first ever FloatLife Fest we attended. It set us on fire. And that's something that we see whenever people come to Lemonade Float Fest for their first time. That spark in their eye. And it's just, yes. You get it."
Lemonade Float Fest X Amped Electric Games Reveille Peak Ranch | 105 County Road 114, Burnet, TX 78611
Onewheel competition sanctioned by USA FLT as an official stop on the 2026 National Championship Circuit. Divisions: Pro Men, Pro Women, Amateur Men, Amateur Women, Novice Men, Novice Women, Teens, Groms. Additional event details and registration at lemonadefloatco.com.
Float athlete registration at usaflt.com.
Follow @usa.flt on Instagram for championship updates.
