I am organizing a tweed ride, as part of a steam punk festival. Basically, folks dress up like it’s 1890 and ride their bicycles together in a social group. The bikes are often old, or made to look old.
Personally, I want to make the ride 6 miles long. But some of the festival organizers are telling me that it should only be less than a mile, and more of a fashion parade than an actual ride. Because somebody might bring small children, and what about the children?! And what if there is a unicycle- it’s too far!
My experience is that people do these rides for the ride. They want to get together with others and have a good time. The rides I have found online are usually 5-15 miles long. My route is a nice back road along a small river in the hills of Vermont, very scenic. Ya know, a nice ride.
Who the hell is going to want to drive to Vermont with their antique bike, pay $10, get all dressed up in costume, and then ride for 10 minutes?
Anybody have an opinion or thought? Anybody done a tweed ride?
I’ve done one (it wasn’t called that, but it was a steampunk bike ride) and it was 2.5 km in length, and was just right. Any more, and the focus would have been more on the ride than the steampunk, I think, and no, that wasn’t why people did the ride. Them fancy duds ain’t exactly for exercising in (especially the corsets!) and people knew it.
And 10 minutes a mile? Are you only expecting regular bikers to do this? Much more likely to be out-of-shape 60-something steampunkers who happen to have access to someone else’s copper-framed artbike left over from the Burning Man local equivalent, or 40-something desk jockeys riding a steamed-up ice-cream tricycle, in my (admittedly limited to the one ride) experience. Walking pace was about it - around half-an-hour for that 2.5km. Not to mention the people on boneshakers and pennyfarthings they can’t properly ride…
…and yes, kids too. What do you have against people bringing kids?
There’s a world of difference between a steampunk festival hosted social bike ride, and something like the London Tweed Run, where it’s regular club cyclists playing dress-up for a lark. At least IME.
It seems to me that having two routes is the obvious answer.
You could break it up with a few bar stops. It’s always fun when some eclectic group infiltrates a local watering hole for a drink.
Why not offer different lengths of ride for different classes of user (up to them which they consider themselves to be) - or have the bar/café stops and say people can drop out at any stop if they want (they probably would anyway, wouldn’t they?). If it’s a matter of needing someone in charge or as a guide or steward, just get different people to look after the different groups.
As someone who has worked in a bar, let me say this: If you are planning to have bar stops along the way please tell the bar owners!
Having 40 thirsty people show up on a Saturday afternoon when you only have one bartender is no fun for anyone.
Sadly, we have no bars in Vermont.
And suddenly now, this ride needs to be “family friendly”. And the directors have chosen the route- 1.5 miles on a public bike path full of children and loose dogs.
Pretty sure I’m going to call it quits.
Well, I know someplace I won’t be visiting…
1.5 miles is a lame excuse for a bike ride. Why not just walk around the block to show off your costumes? Why bike at all?
I like the way the Hash House Harriers do it: Have a leader mark out the trail, with maybe a 30 minute head start, including lots of dead ends. The fast guys find the dead ends and have to circle back around to point the slow guys in the right direction. This keeps the fast people from getting too far ahead of the slow people, but still lets them ride a lot farther and faster if they so desire.
But, it sounds like the problem is moot now. Better luck next time.
No bars that just serve beer and/or liquor. I fucking hate it! I loooove dive bars.
The law says something like 75% of their sales have to be food so they can sell alcohol. So we have restaurants that have drinks. Even the breweries have restaurants so they can sell beers.