Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association - Forums

CHECK OUT THE FLYER!!!! Click on the Rally module on the home page!

Or you can click this link!
http://www.phillymtb.com/promos/flyer-rally-2.jpg

who is voulnteer coordinator for this?  i think id like to help rather than ride...

That's great man! We need a lot of volunteers. Contact Dave Haberstroh. He's in charge of that. I am sure he will be at the next meeting on Tuesday April 3. Stay tuned for details on a Rally meeting before the regular meeting... I will post here.

I have 2000 fliers for the event. Everyone, PLEASE let me know if you want some and who you plan to give them to. Rob Krotee is in charge of Publicity so he will keep track of who disperses these to whom... They look awesome!!!

if you can, get some up to and  over to Keswick Cycle. We are having a big sale, and it would be great to pass those fliers out.

when are we going to hear about the voulnteering assignments?

David Haberstroh is handling the Volunteers duties and hopefully he will take care of this soon...

I am collecting volunteer names right now and still would like to hear from any others and what they would like to do.  Most likely I will send this out at the beginning of next week. I only have 14 people on the volunteer list plus another 6-8 that are on the committee which brings me to about 22 or so.

Please let me know if you are going and what you would like to do so that I can plug you in.

Dave,

I've sent you an email a while ago asking to be put on the volunteer list, didn't hear back from you. I hope you got my name.

Dmitri

If you sent it Dmitri I got it.  You will have all the information you need a good amount of time prior to the ride. Don't worry about that.

For all those who are involved in the Rally in the Valley. I want to apologize for my mistake in getting the second version of the application in later than it should have been.  The first version went in a couple months ago but because we could not use the FOW number we had to send in a new one with the PMBA non-profit number on it.

In my haste I thought I had e-mailed it and after a wake up call from Lou realized that it was possible that I had not sent it. It was taken care of after that call last week. I take full responsibility for that and hope that everyone is happy with my participation in this great event. This may seem funny to some but I am very compassionate about the park and riding in it. I am also stoked about this new biking association.  I do not take my involvement litely and am serious about having this be a long term event.

Having a baby coming has made me crazy and I should have asked for other to follow-up.

Thanks David Haberstroh

Hello all volunteers for the 1st Annual Rally in the Valley on Saturday, April 28, 2007.

I am attaching a sheet with all of you that have contacted me about volunteering. Some basic housekeeping first:

On Friday, April 27, 2007 we will be putting up directional signs. We will meet in front of the Valley Green Restaurant. A time will be decided by mid-week this week. If you are on the list and want to assist on this day please let me know. The list has those that I believe are available.

On Saturday, April 28, 2007 we are asking that people arrive at 6am-Don't say it!!! Everyone will assist with set-up and clean-up on this day.

I have a reason for the way I did the list so if you have a question please let me know.

David Haberstroh, CMP
610-888-1802

How come there aren't signs up everywhere for the rally in the valley?  The event is going to upset a lot of non-bikers because they didn't know about it before hand.

We have been promoting the event quite a bit actually.  We've had flyers up at the valley green for some time now.  There has been flyers out at several starbucks in the area as well. 

One reason we didn't post them randomly all over the place was because we didn't want the rain from washing them off and causing litter.  The last thing we need is for people to find these flyers all over the ground and in the woods of the wissahickon. 

What kind of post is that MJancola? Especially for your first post!  ;) Your post could not have been more negative and completely makes no sense. First of all, our flyers have been all over the place maybe you weren't looking hard enough.... More importantly, how would anyone who uses the park with any common sense be upset about a group of users taht are contributing time and money into improving the park? This is the kind of attitude that leads to conflict. Anyway, why don't you come out to the Rally and we can tell you all about how non-bikers will benefit from OUR HARD WORK AND FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS, and how they should find a way to support the park like we are.

Let's try and stay positive on here. I would never look at it like you just did, but that is just me... Oh yea, Are you a biker? Just curious... Some non-bikers have joined this site and are like Donnie Brasco infiltrating the MOB.  :P

Sorry, I was just trying to be brief, let me re-phrase...  I am a biker and it was meant as constructive feedback.  I realize that mentioning it now doesn't do much for this year's event but maybe it could help in the planning of future events.

I have received much communication about the event via various BIKING listserves.  However, when I ride the park, I ALWAYS meet up with other trail users.  I always try to be courteous and slow way down and say 'hi'.   My concern is that I have seen no TRAILHEAD signage in the park to the effect of, "there will be a bike event in the park on this day to raise awareness and funds, blah blah"  I am worried that regular hikers, runners and dog walkers might be caught off guard when they find a whole bunch of mtn bikers on the trails and they feel they had no advance warning.  I think signage in advance would be a courteous heads-up to the other users.

-mike

Next year - when we have more than say 7 weeks to organize and execute the myriad of complex tasks that were completed to have a legitimate event;  I'll hang some laminated bulletins about the event.  I'll go around and tack them up on major trail heads to give the hikers and equestrians a bit more of a heads up. 

The thing to remember is we've been coordinating this with the FOW and I'm sure quite a few people within that organization have been mentioning it.  Our event is on the FOW front page as well.  I'm not sure if the event was mentioned on any of their online or printed newsletters, but word of mouth travels pretty far and there are a lot of biker/hikers in the group.  I'm thinking more people know about this through other channels than we can accurately measure at this time.

After the rally I'm going to be doing a survey.  One of the questions will be: How did you hear about the rally in the valley?  One of the selections could be: Arrived coincidentally  That may give us some indication of how well our promotions worked out.  At this time I'm not going to assume anything.  I have no idea how many riders to even expect, no less polling how many people showed up without knowing about it.  By that measure the only way to be sure nobody is unpleasently surprised would be to contact nearly everyone who uses the park (so to be safe lets just send them out to everyone in city limits).  I think we're fine :).

Here's a link to a news item on the FOW website.
http://fow.org/upcoming.php#rally

Chris

hey folks...

all good points.  Mikes post was well intentioned...albeit brief.

Yes- some additional PR next year will help....

Now we know we wont reach everyone in philly with the pr, but, we can try.  I just got my weekly edition of chestnut hill local and it was not in there...was it?  Mt. airy local too would be good.  bet you they'd do a piece on us.  We should have them come to the event this year and next year cover it before hand to raise awareness of some local community members.  problem with fow is that their paper comes out 1/4ly.  and the philly enquirer...well- id rather stay away from that for advertising or else we dont know what well get- we can be more targeted. 

other than that i think ya'll have been doing a good job...theres always room for improvement and i know this group will come thru thiis year to the best of our abilities and next year will build on our collective success. 

on another note...i was wondering about a noticable exception or two to the sponsorship list......but its rad that so many of the local shops showed support and FOW is in.  Thats freakin amazing.  are we sponsoring the carrage and horse parade next weekend for the horseback riders???

 I believe FPC isn't down with any signage other than their own on trailhead signs.  Temporary course markers being the exception.  If folks get annoyed with an event that will raise funds that will benefit all park users, so be it.  There will allways be crankpots and they aren't worth our time and effort.

Seriously I need to loosen up I feel like I have to defend mountain bikers all the time.  Like we're doing something shamefully wrong.  Sorry about that diatribe before,  ;D

No these are good discussions. It shows we really do care about our image and we are trying to do the right thing. I think we are trying harder, and are more organized than most other user groups. But I guess it's hard to calculate hikers as a group. All I know is that mountain bikers have outnumbered any other group at the FOW work days for the last 4-6 months... That's says a lot about us... As Chris said, we planned and executed this event on SHORT notice, and some sponsors and items were overlooked unintentionally. Once this thing is said and done, everyone that participated will be proud of the accomplishment!!!! Next year will be sick! MJancola, I am sorry for jumping on your post so hard!

freakin love fest here people.   ;D

Hey all:

I haven't heard of any rain dates for the event or any mention of a cancellation/postponment despite the weather today which will undoubtably leave the trails a mess for tomorrow morning. It just seems strange to me that regardless of the heavy "responsible trail useage" attitude around here and concern for how the MTB community is viewed in the eyes of other park users (hikers/equestrians/etc), that we're not postponing an event which will send god knows how many cyclists on the trails on a day in which everyone here would otherwise deam a day to stay off the trails? I'm in no way trying to start an argument, I'm just interested in other opinions on this, because I haven't heard any menion of it yet. Thoughts? Again I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just brining up the subject since one of the goals of the MTB community is public relations and awareness and all that stuff.

I agree and am quite torn by the dilema of the weather.  :( I, as with all, have been waitng for tomorrow with excitement. If we're going to cancel/postpone, then a decision needs to be made sooner than later to get to word out.

I'm not an official fiaml word on this, so take anything I saw with a grain of salt.

1. No rain date, cos we need to get the date open from the park to make sure there are no clashes, and tomorrow is it.

2. I think that with this week having been pretty dry and the trees really starting to suck in water, the ground should be able to absorb this rain without turning into a mud bath. Also the forecast is calling for the rain to stop at some point in the afternoon, so the trails should have about 12 hours to dry up.

3. I hear that the PMBA officials are waiting to see when the rain stops and how wet the trails are. They do not want to prematurely calcel the event, it's pretty big deal for the club and the park. But in case it is cancelled later today or early tomorrow, all the efforts will be made to get the word out.

dz

11:50 Update: To second Lou's point, I checked the radar and it doesn't look like more rain for the rest of the day, at least. Today during marking up the courses, we will also do additional evaluation of how the trails faired in today's rain.

Well as the President I guess I am the decider, to use a term our gracious Prez uses so often.  ;D With that said, we (PMBA) are extremely sensitive to the impact we will make on the park. We did get a lot of rain, but it has stopped as of 10:30 am Friday. There is a chance of more rain which will not help. BUT, because I am intimately familiar with the Wiss (yes it is possible) I know that it drains like no other place around. The trails will definitely be wet, or moist if you will. But they may not be muddy. There is a difference. The Wiss almost always has muddy spots, even after several days of dry hot weather. The trails are that poorly designed and maintained. This is exactly what we are trying to bring to everyone's attention, and arouse action from them to help out. There are WAY too few people who actually do something about it rather than complain about it. Search your soul and ask yourself what you have done personally to help out the situation.

With that in mind, I think people are going to decide on their own TODAY if they will come out or not based on their perceptions, correct or not, about riding in the wet or muddy conditions. Some people love it, some hate it, some thinks it's inappropriate, some think it's fine... The official IMBA and PMBA position is to avoid riding in muddy conditions. But there is a lot of room for debate on what defines those positions. There will be bone dry spots on the trails tomorrow, I guarantee it. And there will be wet spots, and there will be muddy spots. The conditions will cover the whole spectrum.

One positive way to look at this is that most other user groups will not be on the trails that early in the day, hence less potential conflicts. But I personally want as many people as possible to see what we are doing tomorrow to help out, and hopefully persuade them into helping out in their own way...  That is what this effort is all about... There will always be people who complain about us, we will never change that. I focus and feed on positive people, who actually are looking out for the good of the park and understand what needs to be done and what it will take to get there. I frown on negative, ignorant people who shame us into feeling guilty about what we are doing...

The event is on as of right now, NOON on Friday. However we will be making a game time decision tomorrow morning at the park by 7am. If we must make the tough decision to cancel the event (officially), then so be it. But I am 100% positive that people are going to ride anyway, no matter what we decide. I don't blame them. As long as they contribute time, money, labor, tools, expertise... something or anything to help out. That is the correct thing to do...

See you tomorrow at the Rally!!!

I can deal with what Lou has said as long the "decision" has been made. See you all tomorrow!!!!!!

I was supposed to go for my first off-road ride tomorrow with a friend of mine a Penny Pack, and I sent him an email about the Rally, but haven't heard back.  I want to go out tomorrow, but don't know anyone and don't know the parks at all, and I'm a total noob at MTB (I don't even have a helmet yet, as my friend (the one not getting back to me) has a helmet for me).  If anyone is a newbie, like me and wants to meet up, let me know.  Email me at ricocpa@yahoo.com

Thanks,

Rico

Just come on out to the event. We will have course guides to lead the group of newbies and people unfamiliar with the park.
I'll thrown some spare helmets in my car.
There also will be sponsors from several bike shops at the event. I'm sure you will find a helmet.

You will not be lost and I promise you will enjoy the ride. Look for a tal guy on a white 29er bike. Or anyone in green t-shirt with event staff on the back. We don't bite! ;-)

dz

Ugh, I'm sick as a dog today, and I doubt I'll be in shape for riding tomorrow morning  :'(

Can I still show up, pay the entrance fee, and be in the running for all the raffle schwag?

yes

Thanks!  As of right now, it looks like I'll be there. 

Damn....I just did a google map.....it's 10 minutes from my house!

Best of luck to everyone today. Wish I could be there, but the shop calls.

path

I didn't make it out (barely got out of bed, in fact). Will the major prize winners be listed?

I didn't make it out either.  I woke up waaayyy too late.  How was it??? ???