The Seattle Century is a 100 mile bicycle tour organized this year as a fundraiser for Bikeworks, which is a non-profit organizing which promotes cycling for young people. There were participation levels for 50 and 100 miles; I did the 50 mile on July 31, the day of the event.
Registration for the event was minimum $60. I did not want to pay so I signed up to start a little late but help with event setup, and in exchange I got a free ticket. I went alone to this, but I met some other volunteers who were also alone and an Indian Microsoft guy who was both alone and confused and went with them.
The tour started at Magnuson Park, got onto the Burke-Gilman Trail and went north through Kenmore and to Bothell. From there we got onto the Sammamish River Trail and went south to Redmond. We went further south down W Lake Sammamish Parkway, right on Newport Way to Lake Heights Park, then north on 118th Ave to the I-90 trial going west to Mercer Lid Park. We took the East Lake Washington Bridge off the island then went north on Lake Washington Boulevard to get back to the university and the Burke-Gilman Trail, where we stopped at our starting point. I could not find a copy of their map online, so I photographed my beat-up copy.
I have a mountain bike and it has not been tuned in a couple of years. It held out for the trip, but I might have enjoyed being able to go faster. I stayed with the Indian guy and on breaks drilled him with questions. He seemed like so many other Indians I meet here. He has been working in this area for two years, but said that he has only visited Seattle a few times. This must mean he just goes between work and his home without going out for fun. He seems to only talk to other Indians and does little more than work. We came to four-way stop of an actual street at one point. We needed to travel two crosswalks to get to the corner opposite of where we were. He hit the walk button, then went diagonally across the street. I am not sure whether this seemed to him a shortcut because there were no cars coming or if he really thought this was okay, but to me as a Seattlite, it seemed strange because most bikers follow the rules very closely. I see his behavior as representative of how most Indians in America behave; it was obvious to me that he has not spent much time doing things with local people.
He said he was from Hyderabad, of course. I asked him what he thought of bike tours in his city, and of course he said no one would be interested. I asked him why and he said that bikes there are mostly for poor people and no one would pay. He also had a mountain bike, and I asked him what he thought of the other bikers around us. Almost all of them had bikes which cost more than $1500 and my guess was that except for the volunteers around us they were all professionals. I saw no one who was obviously under age 30 there except for volunteers. I asked him why it was that in American rich people bicycle for fun, but in India bicycling is not really popular as a sport for anyone. He just told me that this event was the first time that he had ever heard of this kind of thing, and that a friend bought him a ticket to go to it, but that his friend was not at the event with him. I would have liked to have talked to him more about sports in India versus America, but he seemed bewildered by my questions.
When I was volunteering I asked the coordinator how many people paid to register. He said 1200, and that 200 more would show up that day. Times $60, that means $84,000, plus they were selling t-shirts for $15 and cycling jerseys for $60. The expenses for hosting the event were arranging for reservations at parks where people can rest, but I think the city gives these reservations for free or nearly free. Also snacks and drinks were at each rest stop, usually provided by volunteers. When I was volunteering I met a medical doctor who was volunteering to be on call if someone got hurt, and also there were mechanics as volunteers to fix broken bikes. Some cars were standing by to drive to trouble if anyone had it, and riders could call for help if they needed it. As I said the tour ended where it started, so they just rented one event hall for this and even that was in a public park. They had a catered meal waiting at the end, but the food was not expensive. They paid for a website and for a designer to create nice maps of the tour. They paid for staff to organize this one day event, but since it is the same every year, I am sure they designed the plans once and now reuse them.
There is no way that this one-day event could have cost $15,000 to organize. That means that minimum they raised $70,000 to host this event, and probably they get that much every year. What a fantastic, healthy, fun, fundraiser involving ecotourism.
The tour was beautiful, by the way. Almost all of it was on bike trials near the water or in the woods. There were small stretches of it on bike paths in public roads, but these areas were designated by signs on the path as being connections between different trials.
I organize events (corporate conferences), too, and nothing is free. Insurance, equipment rentals, staff time (volunteers are awesome, but you can’t run a large-scale event with volunteers only or it will not be a safe event), catering, food (TONS of it on this ride – and all really good), city fees for using the streets (called permits – for real!).
It costs a lot to use a facility like Magnuson.
You have to rent those porta potties, too. Or do you like making your business on the side of the road? gross.
All that equipment has to go in a truck, and most companies don’t own a truck that large so you have to rent one.
From what I saw, the company that did this event does other events, so (based on my experience at work) I can only imagine they’re rather efficient at what they do and they use their resources wisely. Events are too complex to do them any other way.
There isn’t much money to be made in events after you pay for all of those expenses (permits are a real bummer and there are very few opportunities for free space use – partly because of the economy but also insurance liability), but I applaud the people who put them together for my enjoyment because they’re a TON of work. Those people are up at 4am and not done until every table is put away, even if that’s 10pm. My friend works at Magnuson Park and said that in 2009 they were there until dark with the clean up from the messes I helped make as a rider! I didn’t ride in 2008, but I rode 2009 and 2010 and plan to go back next year. It’s so well supported and I really dig that in a ride.