Saturday, January 13, 2007

volunteer for the worst day of the year ride

As part of continue series of winter bike events, the Worst Day of the Year Ride is coming up in a week (Jan 21). Organizers are seeking a few more volunteers to help at the registration table and valet bike parking. Contact erica@annarborchamber.org for more information.

The event includes rides of three lengths (40, 12, & 6 miles). Weather predictions suggest that while this has been a mild winter, precipitation and temperatures hovering right around freezing will help the ride live up to its moniker. To make it more fun, there will be prizes for costumes and for "The rider who can complete the ride with the largest stuffed animal tied to him/herself", because nothing is more fun than goofy looking cyclists dragging giant teddy bears through 40 miles of grimy road slush.
Seriously. We'd love to use that photo to advocate Ann Arbor as a cycling city.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

By the way, I didn't do the ride, but I helped out with their bike parking in front of ABC last weekend, and it seemed like people had a great time. Unfortunately I don't recall seeing any good pictures of the stuffed animals.

They got 80 riders or so, though apparently the rest of the bike winter events weren't really well attended. I think that's also true that bike-to-work-week (or whatever it's called now)--the one event that gets almost all of the attendance is the final ride. I find that a little discouraging for some reason.

I've done my 2.5 mile between work and home a couple times since then. I still have some trouble with my extremities--I have yet to find mittens that will reliably keep my fingers warm on the coldest days.

Unknown said...

Erica posted pix from the WDOTYR at http://www.flickr.com/gp/42237555@N00/6jptp9 .

Unknown said...

OK, I guess URLs don't get linked automatically, so I will add that the pictures do include one of the guy with the giant (raincoat-clad) teddy bear, not to mention sleeveless bazoom guy, and see how well I remember how to code HTML:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/42237555@N00/6jptp9