Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Knoxville By Cycle summer ride series
We're starting to plan the 2008 summer ride series. Last year, we had the Ice Cream Ride, a Scavenger Hunt, a tour of historic homes and a ride to Ijams. With the popularity of the Tour de Lights, we can probably get more creative this summer. Do you have ideas for a ride theme or route? Share them here in the comments section!
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I had a few ideas...
Poker Ride- Each participant recieves one playing card at each of the 5 (or more) checkpoints along the route. Best poker hand at the end wins a prize.
Pedal Powered Food Drive- Each participant is asked to bring some non-perishable food items (canned veggies, boxed pasta, etc.) and the ride is from a set meeting point to a food pantry where the food is donated.
Pirate Ride- Dress and/or decorate your bike in a pirate theme. Yarrrrrr!
Longer rides would be nice. They always seemed too short. I think people underestimate their abilities.
Something for Halloween could be pretty interesting.
As for the longer rides, the only problem is that one of the main reasons we have these rides is to attract beginning and casual bicyclists, and families. A lot of them wouldn't show up if rides were longer than 12 miles.
The Halloween idea is great--but I was asking for themes for our summer ride series.
A few more ideas:
Midnight Ride- A greenway or city ride that takes place at or around midnight.
Ninja Themed Ride- Similar to my Pirate Ride idea but with ninjas. (It is a well known fact that pirates more awesome than ninjas though.)
Hawaiian Themed ride- Bust out the hawaiian shirts and lei's. Post-ride snacks could include a mix of tropical fruits. (A post-ride pig roast would be even better!)
Bike-In Movie Night- A bicycle ride followed by an outdoor showing of a bicycle themed movie. A few cycling movies that came to mind include: Breaking Away, Unknown Cyclist, Flying Scotsman, American Flyers, Quicksilver, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Triplets of Belleville. The outdoor amphitheter near the humanities building @ UT would be a good location because it has built-in seating.
Other cities have 20-30+ mile organized city rides. Only in Knoxville is 12 miles considered a long ride!
If you want more people to show up, make the ride (and car trip with bikes) more worthy.
anonymous,
If you want to ride longer distances you might check out the Knoxville Cycling Forums. (see link on this blog's main page) Plenty of avid cyclists there who regularly put on 25-30 mile greenway rides. If road biking is your thing I'm sure you could find a group to ride even longer with.
If you think 12 miles is not worth coming out for then just show up early or stay late and ride the route that Kelley plans out 2-3 times.
Pedal on,
Ryan Cooper
Another way to get a longer ride, if you live within 10 miles or so of the starting point, is to ride to and from the 12-mile ride rather than driving.
Kelley has put together lots of maps and suggested routes here: http://www.knoxtrans.org/maps/maplist.htm#bike
As for pirates vs. ninjas, sorry, but that's way too controversial for me to weigh in on :)
...or, you could have both - shorter, beginner rides, and one or two longer, intermediate rides so that the newbies could feel like they are building up some experience. Label the rides as such; beginner and intermediate. (You should have lots more beginner rides than the intermediate rides.) And for that matter, you could simply turn over responsibility for the longer rides wholly to the clubs - to use as membership recruitment tools. (But advertise them together on the KBC web site though.)
Theme rides - what about theme rides where certain styles of bikes are "honored" such as a "3-speed" ride where we bring out the the old English Racers of yore.
Or a ride to show off the single speed bikes.
Or a ride for ugliest bike.
Or a ride for unusual bikes (like tall bikes, true beaters, etc.)
On all rides - ALL bikers and Bikes would be welcome - just that those who bring the "theme" bikes would get a special recognition.
...Just a thought!
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