Hey folks, so there’s snow on the ground but winter doesn’t officially start until the Solstice, which is December 21st. So, until then, know that we’ll be around to help you weather the storms of this cold fall season. We have a number of events in the winter to keep you active.
We’ll be hosting some activities on Noel Night: Make-and-take bike part winter ornaments and trinkets, racing to win raffle tickets for some cool bikes (bikes for all ages available) and a break dance performance by Hardcore Detroit at 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. Plus Ocelot Print Shop will be doing live holiday card printing in their space, which is adjacent to where we’ll be, in the CCNDC community room! We’ll be taking volunteers the day before and the night of, too, if you want to do more than just check out the performances.
If you haven’t heard already, registration is open for Bike the Blizzard 2015. We have the pledge envelopes, and we’ve requested donations of cool gear for our riders. The ride isn’t until January 18th, 2015, but we want to get those pledges in before the ride. Each rider who wishes to participate needs to raise a minimum of $50 to ride the day of. Last year we had 25 riders and raised over $7000. As a group we rode 1400 miles! This year we’re hoping to have 30 folks and raise $10k. You can help us make that happen. We will also need volunteers and drivers the day of to provide support to the riders- so even if you don’t ride or donate, you can support this awesome effort.
Also, just to note, we will be having some closures for the holidays. We will be closed the 25th-the 1st in honor of buy nothing day and a few other national holidays. We will have programming the 1st-20th, and then we will be closed for the rest of the year. We’ll be back in January, but an important change is happening in 2015: we won’t be running earn-a-bike as drop in anymore. Earn-a-bike will be a 4-week series of by-appointment sessions that youth and their guardians schedule in advance. We will schedule 12 youth per session, and at the end of the 4th session, youth will take their bike for an inaugural safety ride. Because of the ride requirement, we are pushing the first session of earn-a-bike back till February. We will still host a group for January, but it will be by reservation only. We will also skip a week in February. TO GO TO THIS:
From February 12th-16th we’ll take a couple youth (14 to 19) to Seattle to attend the Youth Bike Summit. Traditionally we have used the money raised during Bike the Blizzard to do this, and we will do so again in 2015, but this year we’re hosting open applications for youth who want to attend. They’ll have to come up with a presentation, and then elect delegates to send to Seattle to represent the group. The application is here:
2015YBSapp and will be available at Noel Night. The deadline is December 20th so we can work on the presentation in January.