In Uncategorized
Long-haul cargo bikes

104 stunningly beautiful miles in one long day

Team PPP completed the 104 miles to Pacific City and raised $3,000 for the American Lung Association in Oregon!  We roundly beat our fundraising goal of $2,500.  Woohoo!  In this post we thank our business sponsors, our friends and family and share some great photos and a short video of our journey.

See all our photos from the event on the PPP Flickr set.

Get a glimpse of our ride through beautiful forest as we near the beach on this Youtube video.

Please read on…

Sponsors bike

A rest in wine and filbert county

Thanks to all of you who joined us in raising funds for the American Lung Association in Oregon and for making our trip possible.  We couldn’t have done it without you!

Here’s a special call-out of gratitude to our executive donors:

Humpty on green

My trusty stead. Both bikes performed flawlessly!

We are super excited for Reach the Beach 2012. Some important take-aways from this year’s event are:  get our starter packets in advance of the event, because the lines are LONG; stay in a tight group of riders and draft, draft, draft with those not on cargo bikes leading the pace line; take shorter breaks because they really add up to increase the overall time.

I’d say the only low-light worthy of mention is that with our total time over 11.5 hours, we missed the festivities and dinner at the beach.  The scene was completely dead when we arrived.  The place was rolled up and put away.

Among the many high-points for me were the great spirits and encouragement from the other riders (over 3,000 in all), the nice cool grey weather with no rain, the awesome Portland Pedal Power team members — 7 riders + two support members, the cup of Nossa Familia coffee at the ride start, the wonderful accommodations provided generously by Zach and his family (THANK YOU!), the day-after breakfast BBQ and drafting for many miles behind a couple on their tandem, including a multi-mile straight at 18 miles an hour into a headwind while on a 75+ pound cargo bike.  Yee haw!!  What a rush.

Look out RTB 2012, here we come!  Long live the Cargo Century ride!

Showing 2 comments
  • Ken Wetherell

    Dallas, those are some great ideas. It’s funny, we came up with some of these too during our team brainstorm after the ride. It makes a lot of sense that we provide a rider support function while partnering with businesses along the route. This is right up our alley. I’m looking forward to working with you and others on next year’s event!

  • Dallas Roemeling

    Ken & PPP team,

    Congratulations on finishing, definitely admirable for sure, thanks for letting us be a part of it. A couple ideas spring to mind, without having any insight into the experience other than what you put here. Maybe have a table at the end event (not sure how much that costs), but maybe just transport a PPP Cargo Bike there & have it there for people to see when they arrive. Or maybe offer to sponsor drinks along the way, handing out water or snacks from the sides. Just to get more exposure. Another idea is get there way early (I have no idea of what time that you got there, you may have done that) so you are at the front as mentioned and enabling people to see/talk about your Cargo Bikes and PPP.

    Glad you had a great time, glad I could, along with Boothster provide both the Printing on EcoStyrene Sponsor graphics and to contribute financially to your goal busting fundraising. Here’s to next year!!!!!

    Dallas