Comments on: Top Serious Discussion: Comments Wanted!

By: Ken Kaminski

Ken Kaminski — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:37:21 +0000

My preference is: no fee, no prizes, as hard as possible.

By: Born to Run

Born to Run — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 23:23:55 +0000

$5 is too much. I’m quitting the scene. Get a haircut, Justin.

By: steve

steve — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:19:49 +0000

I didn’t want it to sound like I hated the USCF fees and all that, I’ve got no problem paying them for all of the above reasons.

But it’s just the concert kind of argument where I don’t know, people complain about an eight dollar show with 5 bands or something like that.

It’s just that an alleycat is a fucking steal at 5 bucks, and would be at any price up to 10 bucks, but i would guess if someone threw a race with an 8 dollar entry, no one would show up and you’d get people complaining out the ass.

this was more of an observation than anything else.

By: steevo

steevo — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 02:50:59 +0000

As far as all the uscf fees. yeah they suck. yeah they are leeches, yeah I paid 180 bucks in licenses this year.
However, if I crash and break my neck, I have insurance. It sucks that this country is such a place that you need insurance or you will be shitted on. However that is the reality and it is nice to know that each weekend or all of last week when im racing my bike, it is one less thing that I need to worry about.

The dudes on the mavic motorcycles with spare wheels and chalkboards giving time splits are worth a few bucks annually as well.

By: dan g

dan g — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:37:53 +0000

$5 always strikes me as being really low for an alleycat (not that I’m complaining)… it’s kind of like doing a (DIY musical) show, where it’s kind of expected that the person setting everything up, wrangling bands, making flyers, etc. is expected to pay out of pocket for all costs and maybe, maybe pay themselves back if the show goes really well. Which is awesome once or twice, but I’d think would get tiring after a while for most people.

I would definitely be willing to pay out more for a. more/better prizes (even if it’s donated, the organizer had to wheedle out of the company) b. more interesting / broad courses (I can imagine what a pain in the ass something like the Rub-A-Dub race was to set up, but those types of courses are so much more fun to me than the standard sprint-to-the-usual-places that reward willingness to run red lights more than navigation or endurance) or c. benefits / charity races.

Speaking of which – if anyone is seriously complaining about $10 for the food bank, and they’re riding a nice bike and going out drinking afterwards, they can suck it.

By: Daveb

Daveb — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:16:42 +0000

To kinda answer the question of where the money goes for an race (USCF or Other) vs an alleycat, i think it kinda goes like this:

Permit
Insurance
Officials fee
Cops (if needed)
The last one is the biggie. We (the former-former-former UPMC team) used to put on a race in schenly park. it was a pretty sweet circuit, but, it got too expensive to run, and we knew that we couldn’t get away with more than $20/head for a one day/one event fee. The biggest thing was having to pay for the (city-required) police for traffic control and road closings. If you have more than two officers, you also have to have a supervisor (it gets better). It’s like $48/hr for the police, since it’s all OT/off duty work, and the supervisor is even more. crazy. also part of the reason the thrift drug classic got canned. too expensive to run, even with a bajilliooon dollars from sponsers.

By: brian

brian — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:51:56 +0000

Bike companies are usually pretty generous in prize donations (see last year’s Rallycat) as long as you don’t go to the well too often. For the Rallycat, I did no begging whatsoever. It probably helped that the race was part of a bike festival, and I was giving the entry fees to BikePGH, but still–I had a ton of stuff from four companies.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:24:08 +0000

Ok, I’ll work on the message board to discuss after bike fest. Yinz be sure to hold me to that so I don’t get distracted.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:54:18 +0000

Yes for an alleycat.

Yes for a message board to discuss.

Yes for meetings especially if it’s at a bar and we drink beers.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:24:27 +0000

Bi-monthly meetings sound like they might be hard. Though I guess we could just hold them somewhere people go normally, like the moose/BBT/Gooski’s or something.

If you need anything in terms of the site or additions, let me know. I could probably get forums (ala Bike pgh) or a wiki set-up, though not until the bike fest madness if over.

As for planning races, I think we need one the weekend of August 11th: Steve will be back in town, and an old acquaintance is coming to town from San Diego. It’s far enough away we can actually write to companies and ask for stuff. I was originally going to do the “RIDE YR BIKE” alleycat, a race with no theme but the regular alleycat stuff (fast, busy, have to do ridiculous things at check points). But if that’s to be bigger, we might want a better theme.