Freezing Saddles Pointless Prizes

[Arlingtonrider]

Thanks so much. Do any of them have somewhat separate areas or rooms where we could gather as a group?

[jopamora]

Bailey’s has a large bar area for smokers and then a separate dining room for non-smokers. I would vote for Bailey’s if it was a Tuesday since beer is $2 all day.
Kora has a private room and a decent sized bar separate from the dining area.
Jaleo has a long bar, but it just runs the length of the dining area.
BW3 has a large bar area in the back.

There is also a King Street Blues in the Underground that has a separate bar area.

[hozn]

I’ve added weather data and published my changes (which were mostly backend changes). The NCDC data turned out to be pretty poor, so I tucked my tail & went with wunderground. I was wrong about the lack of historical hourly observations, so that was a great discovery. In general wunderground API is a real pleasure to work with compared to NCDC.

I think this data is primarily going to be useful for PeteD since he wanted to do some weather-related data mining the the database.

I did add a miles-below-freezing leaderboard, which is a little misleading; it’s basically the total distance ridden where the average temperature for (each) ride was below 32F. I don’t have the data granularity to know exactly how many miles were ridden below 32F, so this doesn’t favor those who rode for 6 hours, 3 of which were below freezing but then it warmed up such that the average temp was > 32F over the duration of the ride. (I’m also only using hour-level granularity for the temperatures.)

I also added sunrise/sunset times, which makes possible leaderboards like hours ridden “before sunrise” and “after sunset” (which I’ve added).

Currently new leaderboards are only for individuals (not teams): http://freezing.hozn.net/leaderboard/individual_various

I should also caveat that this data excludes those that have no geo data associated with the ride. That includes some (but not all) manually entered rides (I’m not exactly sure what the rules are there, but it would appear that some of the rides did have a start lat/lon even though they were apparently entered manually). I also discarded data from manual rides where there was no time entered, since that shows up as midnight and (may have) skewed the sunrise/sunset results.

I’d be happy to go on & on about the data assumptions and the potential for error, but I suspect I’d be talking to myself. (Of course the source is available for whoever wants to take a look.)

[KLizotte]

@jopamora 45444 wrote:

Bailey’s has a large bar area for smokers and then a separate dining room for non-smokers. I would vote for Bailey’s if it was a Tuesday since beer is $2 all day.
Kora has a private room and a decent sized bar separate from the dining area.
Jaleo has a long bar, but it just runs the length of the dining area.
BW3 has a large bar area in the back.

There is also a King Street Blues in the Underground that has a separate bar area.

Jaleo is rather upscale, very quiet, and probably wouldn’t like people in biking clothes hanging around causing a ruckus. Kora might be more amenable. I haven’t been to any of the other places listed. There are bike racks along Crystal Drive and the other streets.

[Arlingtonrider]

Many thanks to those who provided info and feedback. It was really helpful! I made some calls and I know now that we can make everything work out for the same night.

Bailey’s is very easy to get to and sounds like a good possibility. I’ll check a couple of other places out this weekend too and will post details next week.

We’ll definitely be having a pre-Phoenix Bike Show happy hour from appx. 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, March 21 at a venue easily reached from the MVT and just a few short blocks from the Phoenix Bike Show, which starts at 7 p.m. Be there or be square.

[hozn]

I personally will only be able to shirk my family responsibilities for one evening, so if it’s all on the 21st that works well, but if the happy hour is later I will probably just go to the happy hour and skip the awards ceremony.

Is there any concern over having to pay $25-$30 to attend the awards ceremony? Perhaps not; I’m sure we all agree it’s for a good cause (I definitely am a huge fan of what Phoenix Bikes is doing), but it’s not exactly pocket change. OTOH, I’m sure it’ll help them with their fundraising if a significant portion of the BAFS group does attend.

[rcannon100]

Would that be ok with you?

I would say – whoever volunteers to organize the happy hour, gets to pick when and where it is. Seems like a good rule.

If the 1st place team members cannot make it to the Phoenix Bike Show, we can figure out how to deliver the award. Of course anyone can come; it will be grand! (and if we are already getting together for one award, it would be nice to do them all).

But certainly, to the volunteer goes the spoils of picking logistics.

[americancyclo]

@hozn 45465 wrote:

I personally will only be able to shirk my family responsibilities for one evening, so if it’s all on the 21st that works well, but if the happy hour is later I will probably just go to the happy hour and skip the awards ceremony.

ditto

[Bilsko]

@hozn 45445 wrote:

I’ve added weather data and published my changes (which were mostly backend changes). The NCDC data turned out to be pretty poor, so I tucked my tail & went with wunderground. I was wrong about the lack of historical hourly observations, so that was a great discovery. In general wunderground API is a real pleasure to work with compared to NCDC.

I think this data is primarily going to be useful for PeteD since he wanted to do some weather-related data mining the the database.

I did add a miles-below-freezing leaderboard, which is a little misleading; it’s basically the total distance ridden where the average temperature for (each) ride was below 32F. I don’t have the data granularity to know exactly how many miles were ridden below 32F, so this doesn’t favor those who rode for 6 hours, 3 of which were below freezing but then it warmed up such that the average temp was > 32F over the duration of the ride. (I’m also only using hour-level granularity for the temperatures.)

I also added sunrise/sunset times, which makes possible leaderboards like hours ridden “before sunrise” and “after sunset” (which I’ve added).

I’m glad to hear that the Wunderground API is good – I’ve always had to rely on cut-and-paste extracting for the Wunderground datasets in the past (which is why I switched to the Utah Climate Center DB) — all my work just requires .csv extracts of the hourly data that I can then manually merge with hourly electric consumption info…so I’ve never had the need to work with the API.

At any rate, glad to see its working pretty well. Since Wunderground’s historical data has the full set of METARS categories, I wonder how easy/hard it would be to query the conditions field and see when BAFS-ers were riding in the rain or snow (just kidding, we don’t get snow around here) or perhaps the wind speed/gusts category to get a feel for particularly windy rides.

[vvill]

I’m probably more likely to attend just one event as well.

I can do an award or two if there’s any categories left worth awarding?

[Arlingtonrider]

I’ve found a couple of possible venues in Crystal City and am going to check out a few more. Plan is to do an individual-pay happy hour in Crystal City from about 5 to 7 pm, just prior to the Phoenix Bikes Show. It looks like we’ll be able to get a room to ourselves. Yay!

All events on same day too.

See note #110, above, just edited.

[bikenurse]

Is there a “Joe Ordinary” award? That is, the person who came closest to their pre BAFS handicap?

[Amalitza]

@vvill 45529 wrote:

I can do an award or two if there’s any categories left worth awarding?

The list: pick anything that appeals to you.

Highest per day mileage average
Lowest per day mileage average
Team with most sleaze days
Individual with most sleaze days
Team elevation gain
Team time in saddle
Team average speed
individual elevation gain
Individual time in saddle
Individual average speed
Coldest ride.
Weekender: Person with the highest ratio of weekend miles to weekday miles.
3rd placed rider in the 3rd placing team
Most suspicious miles / ride
Best Mardi Gras outfit pics required
Biggest Sandbagger: Largest (by percentage?) deviation from handicap
Most circuitious ride home
Special award for those few who actually ride during whatever snow storm we might actually get
Slowest mph during the beer ride next weekend
Longest chain of bicycles and trailers pics required
Meaning of Life award for the rider whose score ends with the numbers “42”
Most times through the circle of doomed and survived
Best winter kit pics required
Something to do with Ninjas
Crazy Ivan award for most harrowing experience
Award for most interesting shape made from a ride’s GPS map?
Luddite Award – Pen and pad set for the person with most rides manually entered.
Queen or King of the World KOM/QOM earned furthest from DC (or, most QOM/KOMs earned outside the US?)
Crash Test Dummy Award Team with most crashes
Lanterne Rouge. Person who actually competed, but completed the least amount of points.
Coffeenuer: Most rides with a stop at a coffee shop.
Looenuer: . Most stops at a bathroom/porta-john. Possibly from next weeks beer ride
Heaviest Ride: Commuter with picture/scale verified heaviest bike/rack/pannier/trailer rides (idea is that this would be their regular commuting bike, no kid trailers or things normally not on the bike during their commute):
Truancy Award fewest number of days (>0) ridden
Weekday Warrior highest ratio of weekday/weekend miles
Earliest Bird most rides/miles between midnight and dawn
Latest Owl most rides/miles between dusk and midnight

Plus Hans’ latest data updates includes most miles below freezing, which seems like pretty apt award for a “Freezing Saddles” competition.

@mllwhnp 45554 wrote:

Is there a “Joe Ordinary” award? That is, the person who came closest to their pre BAFS handicap?

Not yet… adding to the list…

[Arlingtonrider]

Before I finalize the venue, can I get a quick headcount of appx. how many people plan to come to the #BAFS awards happy hour?

It’ll be in Crystal City, March 21, roughly 5 to 7 p.m. (Phoenix Bike Show starts nearby at 7 p.m.), and will be easily accessible by bike, metro, and presumably car. More details later.

Thanks! Please PM me if you plan to come so we don’t clutter up the thread. I hope everyone can make it!

[Steve]

I’m in.

Also, there is public parking in CC on 20th and 23rd street, like half a block up from Crystal Drive. I believe the lots become free at 4pm, so they are probably good options if you need to drive. There is also public parking elsewhere, just not sure when it all becomes free, and metered parking on the north side of Crystal Drive and on 20th and 23rd then are usually metered until 6.

[Author]

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