Margarita Ride VI

Saturday was the Sixth Annual Margarita Ride here in Vermillion. I'm not sure I have ever truly blogged about the Margarita Ride in detail so I'll give you a little background. Our first two rides started out from Holly S's house with mainly area cyclist/people on our listserv riding and I think the first year we had about 15 riders and the second year we had about 25. From there we moved out to the Winery for the next two years and that is where the ride really started to grow. By the time we left the Winery we had around 75 rollers. Year five (last year) seen us hit about 100 riders on the nose which was a major accomplishment for us, considering our "marketing" of the ride was pretty much exclusively word of mouth. You are now caught upon the "History of the Margarita Ride". I'm thinking that it should be a Wikipedia entry..hmm..might have to work on that.

Nine days before the ride, we ordered our shirts. At that point there were 92 riders signed up. We guaranteed a t-shirt if you signed up two weeks before the ride and we even gave five extra days on that since we didn't order until nine days before. We ordered 135 shirts to have a cushion for "day of" registrations. Well, after The Owner of Spoke-N-Sport pushed the Margarita Ride out to his list of email-ees, our numbers jumped...fast...So, our 135 shirts ran out about about 3 days prior to the ride. Since we didn't order them local, we were pretty much out of luck. There was no way to get more shirts in. Another 45 or so rollers pulled in on Saturday morning pushing our numbers over 180 for the ride. It was almost overwhelming as we really didn't plan for that many nor did we probably have adequate help. EVERYBODY who was helping did an incredible job and for the casual observer, we probably looked like we had it all together!

My 9 year old daughter Marissa rode on the Tandem with me and we did the 30 mile loop. We even rode for a bit with a lady who went to med school at USD a few years back, read about our ride and came all the way out JUST FOR OUR RIDE from Rapid City. It pays to get free pub! It was the first time Marissa has ridden 30 miles (32.01 to be exact) and now she has her sites set on riding the MS Bike Tour next summer. I think that she will be fine too!

Most people rode the 30 or 50 mile loops with a few riding the 15 mile option. Some even did the 30 and the 15 together to create their own ride. Whatever tripped their trigger, everybody seemed to have a good time, followed by margaritas and a Mexican buffet! It was a great ride for a great cause (The MS Society). As soon as I get over my "organizing the ride" hangover, I'll get the accounting side of this down. Quick math in my head tells me that we should be handing over about $1000 to the MS Society which is pretty awesome!

Mark your calendars now from now until I can't pedal a bike anymore. The Margarita Ride will ALWAYS BE THE 2nd Saturday of September. Make a recurring appointment and be there. Sign up early, you'll want this shirt too! This year's shirt had an upside down bicyclist still clipped in with the bike above them and a margarita glass to the side. The caption (of course) was: "I've fallen and I can't clip out...or reach the Margarita".