Good (insert time of day you are reading this),
Today I want to give you good news as I like to do on this website. In two weeks time we will be having our third Progressive Dinner by Bicycle fund raiser. In short, this fund raiser is a leisure paced bike ride where we stop and eat food every few miles. So if you can ride 2 or 3 miles and then relax to eat some good food and then repeat – this is the event for you.
I already let everyone know that Scott Grenerth and Detroit Vegan Soul will be returning this August (they both served up food last May). I believe that Scott will be repeating his peanut butter and chocolate tarts. Detroit Vegan Soul told me they wanted to make collard green spring rolls with BBQ tofu this time around. I’m looking forward to both of these already.
In the past week I’ve gotten back in touch with a few other folks to arrange the rest of the stops on the ride. I’m happy to announce that Batata Shop will be participating in the ride for the first time serving up sweet potato waffles (made from scratch mind you). And if you remember Native Kitchen from last May (Loni made the great hummus bread, coxhina, and lemon short bread) – well if things work out Native Kitchen will be joining us again (keep your fingers crossed).
So in other words, the event is coming together nicely and as always, I’m sure weather will be perfect!
So if you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to sign up ASAP! If you don’t want to sign up online, you can come into our retail shop at 3611 Cass to pay in cash Tues-Sat 10am-6pm and Sun 12pm-6pm. The deadline is August 12th to sign up! Sign up is online at this link.
August and September are the ending of summer and this is very sad for some folks. Many a Detroiter use this time to live it up outside. So I should mention some other events coming up on the horizon.
- First is our next ride, which is our Fourth Annual Safe Streets Youth Ride. This will be taking place Saturday, the 1st of September. This ride is to celebrate our Youth Earn-a-Bike participants and give them one big ride before going back to school in the fall.
This just in: Our friend JT from L.I.V.E. is coming to speak with the youth after the Safe Streets Youth Ride (as well as ride along with us). We donated a bike to JT so he could tour the country and speak about ending violence in schools. With little experience with bikes, JT made it to Chicago, down to Atlanta, up to New York and is now home in Detroit. Read about JT on our website here, here, here and here.
Things have changed for the Safe Streets Youth Ride now that Youth Earn-a-Bike is year round – it no longer signals the end of the program, but does signal the end of our expanded summer programming.
We invite all our Youth Earn-a-Bike participants to come ride along with any others that want to join us. We ask for folks that aren’t family of Youth Earn-a-Bike students to register for the ride by making a donation. Afterward we have a BBQ and hang out because it is fun. - Scheduling is a tricky thing. After fliers had already been made and advertising had begun, I found out that J-cycle is the same day as our progressive dinner ride August 19th. J-cycle is bicycle tour of Detroit showing off the city’s Jewish history. You can get more information at the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan’s website.
Now of course, I want you to come to our progressive dinner, but if you can’t make it or want to do this ride more, I think it is a good choice. In fact, I’ll be there in the morning to help “sweep” this ride and then coming to the shop for our ride. So really you could probably do both as well if you want a marathon day.
Either way, I’m really excited about the J-cycle ride because I’m sure I could learn a lot and ride bikes around with some good folks. They are also going to help out The Hub/Back Alley Bikes through their ride, so we are very appreciative of that. So check them out. Worse case scenario we’ll plan better next year so your favorite progressive dinner ride and J-cycle aren’t on the same day. Sorry about that. - It is a little farther off but Tour De Troit must be mentioned. This ride that has grown so big cannot be ignored. The folks that organize it take on such a huge job making this happen (I have a hard enough time getting together rides each Saturday for less than 10 youth!)
We participate in the Tour De Troit every year as volunteer shop sponsors. This means we provide folks to help with pre-ride bike checks, sweepers during the ride and with a SAG vehicle.
So in other words, we are looking towards our volunteer force to see who can help out with the ride this year. If you are a current volunteer at The Hub and want to help out with Detroit’s biggest bike ride, let us know by emailing jason (at) thehubofdetroit (dot) org.
So get out on your bike this month! There are so many good reasons to do so besides the regular ones.
spread the word!
see ya’ll soon,
– jason x