Guided or not?

Pedal for Prizes offers a few options to participants: ride with a group led by an experienced guide or take your bike out on your own.

Of course, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to the guided rides.

We’ll start with the advantages:

+  Our ride leaders know Old Brooklyn extremely well, so you can enjoy and take in the scenery without fear of losing your way or following a map.

+  Ride leaders are experienced in guiding large groups, and they know how to deal with traffic and asserting the group’s right to the road.

+  There’s no need to lock your ride at destinations because there will be someone watching your bike while you run into shops.  (Still bring a lock, though!)

+ It’s always fun riding with and meeting new people!

Now the negatives:

- If you’re aiming to hit all twenty-two destinations, joining the intermediate/advanced guided ride is probably not your way to go.  The ride leader will wait for all members to collect a raffle ticket at a particular destination, so you may spend a little extra time idle.  Also, a few of the destinations may offer a challenge in which participants will be awarded an extra raffle ticket for attempting it.  The group will wait for everyone to complete the challenge before departing.

- Riding with the guided group will not give you as much of an opportunity to explore stores and shops at your own pace, explore around Pop UP Pearl and enjoy the entertainment there, grab something to eat, or partake in a quick game of bicycle polo with the Pedal Republik of Cleveland.

- The larger group may create bottlenecks, so it will not be as easy to pop in and out of a shop really quickly and trek on to the next destination like if you were on your own.

We’ll have more information on an upcoming blog post about how to prepare for the event and things you can expect there.

At last year’s Pedal for Prizes, the majority of participants went off on their own.  What are you planning to do?

Social Media & Other Stuff

We’ve been posting a lot on our social media pages much more so than blogging, and our goal is to try to blast something interesting about Old Brooklyn Pedal for Prizes every day.

Some of the things we’ve written about on our social media include prizes participants can win, press we’ve received, special happenings during Pedal for Prizes, and helpful information the day of the event.  So if you don’t like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, you’re missing out!

Our website is always a work in progress.  We just finished a press page, and next we’re working on creating a page with information for you for the day of the event and develop our sponsors/supporters page.

If you and/or your business would like to donate prizes to raffle at Pedal for Prizes, please let us know by emailing us at pedalforprizes@gmail.com.  We’ll reciprocate by providing you advertising.

Lastly, please check out Old Brooklyn CDC’s new Pop UP Pearl website.  Pop UP Pearl will be happening at the same time as Pedal for Prizes, and some of our destinations will be in and around Downtown Old Brooklyn where it is set up.

Questions?  Feel free to comment below or email us at pedalforprizes@gmail.com.  Happy riding!

Dusting off the old blog

A month has gone by without any new blog posts.  Oh my goodness!  We have been extremely busy planning for our second Pedal for Prizes, and we’re very happy to report that everything is going great.

Since you last heard from us here, we worked with our friend Katie O’Keefe on designing a very attractive identity and card for Pedal for Prizes.  Tom Kehoe from Old Brooklyn’s Kehoe Brothers Printing ran off a thousand, and we immediately hit the pavement to canvas local establishments.  We even had fliering parties that included our fellow bicycle advocates from Crank Set Rides, Cleveland Critical Mass, and Rustwire.  We ran out of cards in a week and a half, but Kehoe’s machines are currently cranking out another grand for us.  (If you’re here because you picked up one of those cards, welcome!  Feel free to say hello and comment from where you got our info.)

We’ve also been working to drum up some media for when Pedal for Prizes approaches.  Whether you’re from the press, have your own blog, or just have a lot of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, we’d sincerely appreciate any and all positive info you can spread and share.

We’ve also been diligently pursuing donations from local merchants and area businesses.  We’re pretty excited to tell you about some of the prizes we’ll be raffling to you.  We’ll just tell you to head over to Facebook and like Pedal for Prizes for hints on some of the things you might be able to win.  Remember that Pedal for Prizes is totally free.

Old Brooklyn Bicycle Poker, July 2010

And of course, there’s the less glamourous, but equally important business to which we have attended: working on finalizing release forms with Roger Bundy Law; collaborating with the Cleveland Police Department Second District  to ensure the safety of our participants; garnering the participation of our favorite neighborhood businesses to serve as destinations; making maps and raffle tickets for the big day; securing necessary permits; and so on.

In sum, we’ve been working diligently to give you the best experience of the Old Brooklyn neighborhood that we know.  It’s months and months of volunteering our time to host a four-hour event, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.  These four hours can have such a positive impact on so many facets of our neighborhood for years to come.  That’s how we wholeheartedly look at it.

Thanks for all of you that have supported us in one way or another, shared your skills and talents, contributed prizes or other donations, allowed us to canvas your space, followed us on Twitter or liked us on Facebook, told friends about us, listened to our pitch, or just plain believe in us.  We’re well on our way, and it’s because of you.

The Grand Prizes

The grand prizes of this year’s Pedal for Prizes will be two brand new Trek 7000 bicycles.  Come to the event — which is totally free and open to all — and bike to as many of our twenty neighborhood destinations as you’d like, and you just might go home with a fancy new ride!

What’s slightly different this year is that the raffle will be Chinese-style, so if you really want one of those Trek 7000 bikes, you can go all-in for it.

But remember that we’ll  have many, many more prize packages available for you to try to win.

Thanks to Neighborhood Connections for the funds to purchase the bikes for us to give away and Eddy’s Bike Shop for graciously offering them to us at their cost from the manufacturer.

Neighborhood Connections

Over the next two months, we Old Brooklyn Pedal for Prizes organizers will utilize our blog to tell snippets of our story, such as who we are, how our concept came to be, what inspires us to host this kind of event, and the types of things on which we are currently working.  But of course, we will also post major announcements and exciting news right here as well.

After a successful Pedal for Prizes in 2010, there were no doubts that we organizers behind the event sought to continue our efforts and make it a mainstay in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood.  (If you are interested in reading more about how Pedal for Prizes came to be, feel free to read Tom Collins’ article in the June issue of the Old Brooklyn News.)

After taking a month or so to assimilate and decompress following the first Pedal for Prizes and coordinating Bicycle Poker as part of Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation’s annual All Access event, our planning of 2.0 began.  John Young and I completed and submitted a grant application to Neighborhood Connections, a program of the Cleveland Foundation, for $4,024.  With the funds, we had proposed to purchase two brand new bicycles to raffle, which Eddy’s Bike Shop graciously offered to sell at their cost from the manufacturer.  However, the bulk of our budget was designated for promotion and marketing of Pedal for Prizes so that we would be able to reach out to thousands of potential attendees.

John and I were invited to interview with a Neighborhood Connections grant-making committee in the fall, and a few weeks later, were notified via mail that our application would be fully funded.  Staff of Neighborhood Connections also offered to provide technical assistance to us in promoting and publicizing Pedal for Prizes.

So our advice?  Neighborhood Connections is within reach, so if you have a solid concept that you think will benefit a Cleveland neighborhood, definitely pursue this funding opportunity.  The application is not particularly difficult, especially if your group designates one person to concentrate on the narrative and another on the budget and purchasing like John and I did.

For more information about Neighborhood Connections, please visit neighborhoodgrants.org.

- Jeffrey Sugalski

Welcome to pedalforprizes.com

Greetings and welcome to the official Pedal for Prizes website.  We’re pleased to be bringing our second Old Brooklyn Pedal for Prizes on Saturday, May 21, 2011.  (Of course, if you aren’t familiar with Pedal for Prizes, please click the Pedal for Prizes 2.0 link in our header.)

We’re still working to flesh out content for our website and complete our promotional materials to canvas Northeast Ohio.  But in the meantime, here are a few ways you can support our efforts at organizing this year’s event:

* Bookmark our site, and maybe tell your friends and family about it.

* We’ve set up a Twitter, so please follow us @pedalforprizes.

* We’re always seeking donations of gift certificates to locally owned establishments, tickets to events and destinations, and merchandise to be raffled.  To donate, please contact us at pedalforprizes@gmail.com.

* If you have ideas or leads for media attention, please let us know by leaving a comment.

Stay tuned for updates in the near future.  We may even be announcing some surprises as the event approaches, so please be sure to visit pedalforprizes.com often.