Cranksgiving Forum

November 2014

Who are you? Where are you from? How'd you get yourself into organizing Cranksgiving?

May 2015

Jessi from the Hamptons, NY. We did our first cranksgiving last year in partnership with NBC and I pulled it together in 10 days! Schew! This year we'd like to grow in size and improve the our course!

May 2015

I'm Shana from Little Rock. We had our first Cranksgiving last year. I put together in 2 weeks, 34 people showed and they gathered 300 pounds of food for Arkansas Rice Depot. This summer Cranksgiving – Little Rock, Spokes Little Rock and Arkansas Foodbank Cereal Drive will be teaming up to see which local bike club can donate the most boxes of cereal. The winning bike club will have local food truck come feed them for free after one of their Saturday rides. The Cereal Drive has been going every summer since 2000 to help those in the Foodbank's 33-county service area to have food to eat for breakfast. The cereal drive is a friendly competition to see which business, organization and community can donate the most cereal during a four-week period.

May 2015

I'm Ken from NYC. I took over Cranksgiving from it's founder, Tone, when he moved to York, PA in 2007. Before that, I had ridden in 4 Cranksgivings, coming in 3rd place this one time (very proud of myself for that), and coming in top 10 in the 5th or 6th annual Cranksgiving, which only had 18 riders, because it was rainy & miserable. When Tone moved away, I asked him if it was ok for me to take this over, because it was too good of a thing not to keep happening here. In my other life, I'm a graphic designer at an events marketing company.

May 2015

I’m Jim from Berks County, we hosted our first Cranksgiving in Reading PA last year. We had just over 40 riders and collected around 1200 lbs of food in 2.5 hours in the pouring down rain. We were astonished at the turn out and success. We will be hosting one again this year for sure…and plan to make it even bigger and better than last year’s event! We have a great bike culture in Berks County, if you are ever in the area please get out and ride!

June 2015

Tom Coonelly
Hi, I'm Tom from Sequim, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. This will be our 5th Cranksgiving to benefit the Sequim Food Bank. The event is put on by the Sequim Spoke Folk and other riding groups in our community. With a population of ~5500 we may be the smallest community in the nation to host a Cranksgiving.

August 2015

CJ here, from Philly. In 2007, I was going to undergrad in Lancaster, PA, and heard about Cranksgiving York. I dragged my friend Gary over to York, where we met Tone, and participated from 2007 to 2010. I graduated and was out of Lancaster in 2009, and so Gary and I kept toying with the idea of starting Cranksgiving Philly. (I also was tired of driving us the 2 hours to York every year!). So, 2011, we finally bit the bullet and got the wheels rolling on Cranksgiving Philly.

2015 will be Gary and I's 5th year as organizers. As we ourselves are evolving as cyclists (I have found my niche in randonneuring, and Gary in cyclocross racing), we find our word-of-mouth network growing and the umbrella getting bigger. We also find that we are one of the few/only 'open and accessible' events for urban cyclists in Philadelphia. It is a pity that the Philadelphia cycling community has its different niches that don't seem to overlap, but we are doing our best to get everyone together for a good cause.

In my day-to-day, I work in a lab in University City, Phila. that focuses on the genetic basis of taste perception.

August 2015

Chad from Spoke-N-Sport in Sioux Falls, SD. Ever since the beginning of Cranksgiving I've had a reminder to start planning it on Oct 1. Last year I finally conducted our first Cranksgiving. We had a small turn out of participants but all the media came out and covered the event. We're excited to do it again this year.

August 2015

Hidey ho! Tom from Portland, Oregon - looking forward to learning all your event secrets. This will be my third year cranking forward. This year we're hoping to raise over $2000 in supplies for a homeless support organization. Along the way we try to knit together various cycling subgroups, and the greater cycling world with the city at large - businesses, nonprofits, etc. Part of my larger effort to encourage winter cycling, see puddlecycle.com for details. I do web development for dough.

Our event has been a race the last two years, but I really want to encourage families and new bike riders, so we have a costume contest and a "biggest spender" award, too. I like the energy of a race, but am not sold on the idea of highly visible lawbreaking/borderline dangerous riding being good for the bike scene. Thinking about taking the speed element out of it this year, but we might then lose the racing crowd. Would love to hear your thoughts!

September 2015

Hi, I'm Pam from CLT Spokes People in Charlotte NC. This is the 3rd or 4th Cranksgiving in Charlotte. This year we're holding ours a little early in hopes the food will be used for Thanksgiving meals.

We'll have a team competition for the faster people with the team having the most food by weight as the winners. There will be a 3 hour time limit on the collection with locations further out giving more points. Slight bonus for distance and amount of food collected. We want people to collect more food for the food bank. I'll also be leading the non racers around town so we can all do it together. Last year we had terrible weather - cold, constant rain the entire time. We had a small group but still collected about 300 lbs of food.

October 2015

Hello from Pocatello Idaho we love this event and to give hope to the newcomers here is my story last year 2 1/2 weeks before Thanksgiving the local news had a story from the local food bank of a huge turkey shortage. I had just watched on the Today show the Cranksgiving peice, I went a saw a dear friend of mine that owns the local bike and ski shop to solve the turkey problem in Southeast Idaho. So we had the 1st Cranksgiving in Pocatello we did the event a little different then protocal because of a time issue. So we emailed all the local bike clubs, had contest at the schools, churches and anybody that would could get involved. We ended up with over 600 turkeys and the bike ride we did was all the riders came and rode to the food bank with a turkey on the bike. It was cold with rain and light snow. The goal this year is 1000 turkeys we found out from the local food bank the fixings for dinner are easy to get it is the turkeys they have a problem with. So going strong in Pocatello Idaho by Tami Parris

October 2015

You know, @tparris - I was just talking to people from Boston & Kansas City, and they really want to have an inter-city competition for "largest weight of food donated". I'm pretty sure, with 1000 turkeys, you'll have everyone beat.

October 2015

Hello! I am John Bennett, executive director of the Savannah Bicycle Campaign in Savannah, Georgia. We are organizing our third Cranksgiving this year to benefit Emmaus House, which serves breakfast to homeless people and others in need on weekday mornings, on Nov. 21. Details here: http://bicyclecampaign.org/help-feed-the-hungry-on-nov-21-with-our-third-annual-cranksgiving-ride/

Ken, how can I add our event to your "Other Cranksgivings" list?

October 2015

John @SavBikeCampaign ... do I have your email address? If not, let me know what it is. I'll post up your details on the site right now - but usually I send out a couple emails starting around september to reach out to people. Thanks, and hope the organizing goes well!

October 2015

Thanks, Ken. john@bicyclecampaign.org

November 2015

Hi, I'm Fran Taloricco, managing partner of Doylestown Bike Works (Doylestown, PA). We were inspired by Ken to start Cranksgiving in our county in 2012.

November 2015

Carter here, Going on my 4th cranksgiving this year! We are doing races XC,CX, alleycat to raise money as our charity of choice (Urban Bicycle Food Ministry) uses the money we raise to buy food throughout the year.

November 2015

I'm Rob from Cleveland. I work for the local advocacy non-profit, Bike Cleveland, and we are on our 4th annual Cranksgiving. You can check out our event on our website - http://www.bikecleveland.org/bike-cle/events/cranksgiving-cleveland/2015/11/ - also on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/events/1644523042472185/

It would be cool if we could get a shout out from big brother/the great turkey/the alpha (basically, you guys) and added to your google map.

Thanks, and keep being awesome!

November 2015

You weren't on the map? Oops. My bad. It's been fixed. Hey, could you actually send me your email address? I don't have one on file for Cleveland. Thanks!

November 2015

I'm Jeff from KC. I started putting this together in 2006, as close as I can recall. The last few years, the event has finished at St. Peter's Church in Kansas City, which provided a gathering place and a food pantry to get the food. It's absolutely the most fun I have on my bike every year.

October 2016

My name is Pablo Brito from Salem Oregon, I graduated from Portland state university and had an awesome time getting involved with bike advocacy while I was in Portland. I moved back home (salem) and was a recent grad with no job. I found out that a new non-profit bicycle shop had recently opened up in the area. Decided to ask them for an unpaid internship (which they gave to me) they threw the Cranksgiving idea at me, I did a little bit of research and held the second Cranksgiving in Salem on November 21st 2015. I had about 10 folks show up (which included a few families with young children). Everyone had a blast and recieved positive feedback about the event. Now I am organizing the event again for a second time (myself) but a third time in Salem.

Cheers!

October 2016

Hello from Pocatello Idaho we are ready for another big Cranksgiving my name is Tami Parris

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