What happened to the great organization of the ride? It's as if all the people who did such a great job organizing the ride in 2009 went on a well-deserved vacation, and another group took over organizing events.
Specifically, I'm talking about the "celebration ride" and the "visual statement". The celebration ride was organized for October 18, and the visual statement on October 22. At this time of the year, the weather becomes a problem. Some people (like myself) can't ride when the temperature is too low. I know that the weather can sometimes be nice in October, but it's a real gamble that shouldn't have been taken. Why couldn't these events been organized when the weather was better? On top of it all, the visual statement was a Thursday afternoon. Didn't somebody realize that a very significant proportion of the participants might have been trying to earn a living? As it turns out, it was very cold and raining, and about 50 people participated, out of 1,450 riders (about 3%). Had it been done on a weekend during the summer they might have gotten several hundred people and made a much bigger impact.
I think the organization needs a wake-up call.
-- Edited by comsoft on Friday 23rd of October 2009 07:04:57 AM
I have encountered the same problems with some members of the organization. I have made suggestions to change the team funding to make it more fair to team members. It appears that they just "love" the idea, think it's very good, but it continues to fall on deaf ears. The last time I tried to contact them it took me over nearly two weeks to get a response. The Ride should not be solely about raising money, raising awareness is also important. The Ride organization should remember that without us, they are nothing! Our opinion matters. I put a previous blog on Team funding and nobody from the Ride organization even responded to it. Les Moulins Lafayette have created a chocolate bar for fund raising profit. 100% profit goes to the organization. The Organization doesn't even show it anywhere on their site.
Let's remember that the celebration ride was originally scheduled for early October - unfortunately they put it on a Jewish Holiday (which most fall weekends were affected by) - so they had to move it after the holidays - thus the October 18th... It was a tad cold to start - but then things warmed up as we got moving... Too warm of course - then had to remove layers - but it was still a gorgeous sunny day. No guarantees from anyone on weather though - and that can be said for July as well as October - as those of us who rode in the rain for 3 hours or more can attest to... I don't know who picked the timing of the visual statement - I really don't think they expected hundreds of people downtown at lunch on a weekday - but I do think they probably got enough people to make the statement they were looking for... Wayne - no one from the ride organization ever responded to any posts on the message boards last year - so I wouldn't be expecting any change to that for this year. I think the best bet would be to call the ride office if you have any questions. They don't promise to answer e-mails quickly - but there is usually someone near the phones or returning calls on a regular basis. Also - for the selling directly on the site - I don't know if you tried buying something from the general store -but it's not a Montreal driven organization - it's actually coming from the U.S... Or at least it was last year... It would be nice if we could all sell our fundraising items through the ride's website - there are the chocolates, Mermaid's lemon loaves, I made cards, someone else made calendars - but alas - I think it's more on an individual basis... Just my 2 cents...
I was told by one of the ever-pleasant people at the ride office that they couldn't schedule the visual statement before they got all the materials for next year's ride from the head office (in California), and that the head office might not be aware of the fact that the weather gets dicey up here.
In any case, I will strongly dispute your statement that "they probably got enough people to make the statement they were looking for", based on the fact that I didn't see, hear or read anything at all about it except on the ride website. Admittedly, I'm not a huge devourer of all the media. Did anyone else find any coverage of the visual ststement?
This is not intended to be simply critical. We're putting in all this effort and/or money for a great cause, and I'm hoping that somebody takes note so that things can be improved in the future. I did discuss these points with the ride office, and they seemed glad to have people pushing for improvements.
