Ok! We will go first..

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we had massive turnout this year. There were a lot of contributing factors, but one of the biggest was the decision to seriously encourage team participation. A couple of bike clubs and a swim club embraced the idea and things took off from there.

The results:

178 riders
69 turkeys

Bike Saviours Bicycle Collective and Tempe Bicycle Action Group hosted the fifth annual Cranksgiving in Tempe. While we had a low turnout, everyone had a great time and we gathered a significant amount of food for Tempe Community Action Agency's food pantry.

A manifest of nine local grocers were provided and a list of the food pantry's most desired items. We gave riders 2 hours to reach their destination where we weighed the food and awarded prizes to winners.

Riders participated in a number of ways:

Alleycat (first rider to grab one item from each stop on the manifest and return wins)

Individual Heavyweight (individual carrying the most food by weight wins)

Team Heavyweight (teams with a max of 3 people carrying the most food by weight wins)

Joyride (no time or weight criteria, just ride for fun!)

Prizes awarded were provided by local bike shops and restaurants.

We had  a total of 19 riders and hauled a total of 1,299 pounds of food!

The winner of the Individual Heavyweight category hauled 127 pounds and the Team Heavyweight winners hauled 734 pounds!

To make the event more equitable, we started a GoFundMe for folks wishing to support our riders with funds to buy food. This worked nicely as our "cargo cult" family in Tempe is strong. We didn't want a lack of funds to deter participation.

This was the first annual Cranksgiving for State College, PA.  We had originally anticipated 20-30 people, we had 76 registered, and between the no-shows, and the people who didn't sign up, we had 75 riders, so it worked out.

In the end we collected ~1044 items, weighing approximately 1089 Pounds. Receipts were over just over $2,000.  The cash and giftcards collected were used a few days later to purchase items the charity needed.. They received a lot of mashed potatoes and pasta, but needed gravy and pasta sauce.

If you are curious how our event was organized. The Map and Info sheet are on our website https://cranksgivingstatecollege.com

I hosted the inaugural Cranksgiving in Iowa City, Iowa. I was expecting 20 riders, and we had 45. Not bad for our first year! Riders were given a manifest list with 5 required items and 3 optional items of their choice. They had to make 3 required stops and 5 additional stops. A fun little bonus we had for the racers or those who wanted a fun challenge was to take a self-photo at an Iowa City landmark (The Old Capitol) as well as to our two charities (see below). If they did this, they got a 20 minutes time bonus off their time. Additionally, we made two items (laundry detergent and baby formula) a 20 minute bonus item as well. Many riders did the bonuses and it really helped change the end time results!

We had gift cards from our sponsors to hand out to the top 3 fastest riders, the youngest rider, the oldest rider, most items donated, heaviest weight, and so forth. About 350 pounds was donated to the CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank (most of this were canned goods). Some donations of a few hundred dollars also went to CommUnity and Table to Table. I did all the organizing pretty much solo and ran the event as well solo, so I'm very pleased with the overall success of our event! Everyone had a great time and is looking forward to next year!

Out event website can be found at: https://cranksgivingic.weebly.com/

So, I'm Zej and I ran NYC this year.

A week before the event typically happens I found out that no was organizing it... so I did it, lol. I only had 7 days to get the word out that the event was happening but there was no way I could let the OG Cranksgiving race die in its 21st year. That being said, this year didn't have the numbers that NYC normally gets. That'll be different next year 🙂

The run down:

• Race Style:
  • Alley cat with short and long options.
  • Riders were given a 5x5 grid of grocery stores and had to hit one from each row and one from each column. No doubling up.
  • That system created:
    • Short Course: 10-15 miles, riders were going no further south than Houston St. and no further north than 120th
    • Long Course: 15-20 miles, riders were going as far south as Fulton Street and as far north as 162nd
  • Riders had to complete the long course to qualify for Top Male, Top Female, Top Trans/NB/GNC, or Top Rookie prizes. Top overall short course rider also got a prize, as did overall DFL. No one really stood out as most charitable so that prize wasn't given out. The other 15 prizes or so were given out through a raffle drawing.
    • Our Top Female was also our Top Rookie, which was kinda cool!
• Rider totals:
  • A little over 50 riders
  • Ages 9 to 62
    • The 9-year-old, his 10-year-old brother, and their mother did the race together and came in DFL to a massive ovation from the whole ballroom. It was one of my favorite memories from the race.
• Receipt totals:
  • A little over $2,000 in receipts
    • $900 of which came through a GoFundMe I set up to help fund the event and raise money for donations to this race, Brooklyn Cranksgiving, and a Toys for Tots alleycat.
    • Creating a GoFundMe for the event is an AWESOME way to cover some of the overhead (envelopes, spoke cards, printing, etc.) but also to allow folks who can't make the event also chip in for food donations. This was the one I set up this year: https://www.gofundme.com/f/cranksgivingnyc2019
• Sponsorship totals:
  • Hostelling International hooked us up with a venue, food, and a prize for the second year in a row
  • Blue Point Brewery donated 4 cases of beers because this was NYC Cranksgiving's 21st birthday and we couldn't NOT have a few brews afterwards!
  • Skydive Sussex from NJ donated a free skydive as a prize
  • Cyclehawk (a local courier company) hooked us up with donations from:
    • Kryptonite
    • Continental Tires
    • Manhattan Portage

Thrilled that we managed to pull this off. A lot of credit goes to the volunteers who came out, previous organizers who set me up for success with their previous efforts, and the fact that the NYC cycling family is super awesome and close-knit. I actually took notes on how I did this all and will be writing it up and turning it into a little guide for future years. Stay tuned 🙂

-Zej M'ski

Howdy fellow Cranksgiving organizers!

Boise GreenBike is the bike-share program in Boise, Idaho. 2019 was the fourth year we have sponsored a Cranksgiving event, and I've got to say it was bigger and better than ever! The event was held on Saturday, November 23, 2019. We are fortunate in that the local St. Vincent de Paul Society has a well-established Thanksgiving food box program that we are able to plug into. The program has a list of items it wants in each box which we use as the basis for our event. This year nearly all the items on the list were donated by business partners, leaving the teams of riders to purchase only the turkey and a couple of little items. 

The format of the event is a team scavenger hunt, with teams of up to six people. Because we want people to know about our bike share program we require each team to have at least one GreenBike rider. We give the GreenBike riders a $20 credit in the system, which more than covers the time they spend finding the answers to trivia questions about Boise art and history, and collecting food items from our business partners. Many of our partners require racers to perform some silly task in order to get the food item.

Costumes are encouraged, but not required. We had some good ones this year.

This is a timed event and we award trophies to the top three teams, the team with the biggest turkey (It was 26.4 lbs!), and best team costume. Everyone gathers at a local brewery (Clairvoyant Brewing) for a fun after-party. Every racer of drinking age gets a free beer. There's live entertainment and a food truck.

This year we had a running start to the bikes that was super fun! The totals at the end of the day were impressive. Roughly 250 riders and 49 teams. We delivered 51 Thanksgiving food boxes to St. Vincent de Paul. There were food items leftover at partner businesses so we collected those items last week and donated them to a homeless shelter.

If you'd like to see some images from the event and a short video of the start, go to the Boise GreenBike Facebook page, or the Cranksgiving Boise Facebook page.

We hope to continue to grow the event as so many participants say it is the most fun they have all year.

Happy holidays everyone!

Dave Fotsch
Director
Boise GreenBike
dfotsch@valleyregionaltransit.org
208-331-9266

Happy to see PA had 9 Cranksgivings.