It’s Festivus!

[SarahBee]

@smb9600 202620 wrote:

I also liked the point system last year! I echo teams based on location to make it easier for folks to get together for rides/gatherings if they wanted. It may also be helpful to allow participants to chose if they would like to be on a team that will host safe/socially distant rides/gatherings or not (if those are still allowed this winter!) Additionally, team size may want to be capped at 8-10 in case the sizes of group gathering are limited again.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wonder how teams can be assigned to be flexible enough to accommodate people who may have to quarantine for 14+ days due to contact exposure or due to positive test results. CDC frowns upon those people leaving home and potentially infecting others. Not naming any names, but some may still be commuting into work part time in buildings with those who refuse to wear masks…. rhymes with “Minotaur Sassly” and “Minotaur Stand”?

[cvcalhoun]

@SarahBee 202650 wrote:

I wonder how teams can be assigned to be flexible enough to accommodate people who may have to quarantine for 14+ days due to contact exposure or due to positive test results. CDC frowns upon those people leaving home and potentially infecting others. Not naming any names, but some may still be commuting into work part time in buildings with those who refuse to wear masks…. rhymes with “Minotaur Sassly” and “Minotaur Stand”?

I don’t know that we need any special rules for this. People have gotten sick or injured in past years. Unless someone gets knocked out for almost the whole season, we just assume that this is a hazard of the game, and is likely to affect all the teams more or less equally. I would assume that either illness or quarantine would be treated in a similar manner.

We also tell people not to be stupid. For example, don’t go riding if you can’t do it safely. This year, we hope that people will not ride when and where there is a chance of infecting anyone or getting infected. I don’t know how you enforce that. I would, however, point out that this is not the Grand Prix. Even in a normal year, the “big” prizes tend to be things like decorated paper plates. This year, I’m not sure how we’ll be able to give out physical prizes at all. I would hope that people would remember that it is not worth jeopardizing your health, the health of your coworkers, or the health of anyone else in order to win a paper plate.

[SarahBee]

@cvcalhoun 202651 wrote:

I don’t know that we need any special rules for this. People have gotten sick or injured in past years. Unless someone gets knocked out for almost the whole season, we just assume that this is a hazard of the game, and is likely to affect all the teams more or less equally. I would assume that either illness or quarantine would be treated in a similar manner.

We also tell people not to be stupid. For example, don’t go riding if you can’t do it safely. This year, we hope that people will not ride when and where there is a chance of infecting anyone or getting infected. I don’t know how you enforce that. I would, however, point out that this is not the Grand Prix. Even in a normal year, the “big” prizes tend to be things like decorated paper plates. This year, I’m not sure how we’ll be able to give out physical prizes at all. I would hope that people would remember that it is not worth jeopardizing your health, the health of your coworkers, or the health of anyone else in order to win a paper plate.

Those are great points, Carol. Perhaps people in similar situations who are still going into work and have a high chance of exposure should not register to be on a team and potentially drag their team points down. Would you recommend they join friends of Freezing Saddles or Team Slacker? Or is sitting out this year the safest choice?

[drevil]

@merlin 202648 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]21759[/ATTACH]

Hi Merlin,

It’s a little hard to see your image (on the PC and Tapatalk on the phone), but if I squint really hard, it looks like what I imagined. Basically, each of the bullet’s items have teams for each choice, and the graph shows points for each team, along with number of rides.

IIRC, you are one of the awesomesauce behind-the-scenes coders? If so, is this difficult, tricky, or time consuming? If yes to any of those, then no worries! BTW, thanks for your work (along with the others) for your help making FS possible.

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Stolen pic.

[cvcalhoun]

@drevil 202657 wrote:

Hi Merlin,

It’s a little hard to see your image (on the PC and Tapatalk on the phone), but if I squint really hard, it looks like what I imagined. Basically, each of the bullet’s items have teams for each choice, and the graph shows points for each team, along with number of rides.

IIRC, you are one of the awesomesauce behind-the-scenes coders? If so, is this difficult, tricky, or time consuming? If yes to any of those, then no worries! BTW, thanks for your work (along with the others) for your help making FS possible.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]21760[/ATTACH]
Stolen pic.

Just to give you fair warning: The registration form is now up (although it has not yet been publicized). So if this is not resolved quickly, it will be too late to collect the information.

[merlin]

@cvcalhoun 202659 wrote:

Just to give you fair warning: The registration form is now up (although it has not yet been publicized). So if this is not resolved quickly, it will be too late to collect the information.

There is a PR up that provides a UI for folks to select their affiliations within the FS app itself, so no extra effort needed in the registration process. Obviously folks would then have to be proactive about this selection step. @drevil, not much effort as specced.

[Dachs6]

@awitt 202611 wrote:

I liked the point system last year and the team size was fine. I suggest changing as little as possible from last year given how much of the rest of our lives has changed. I especially want to avoid changes that would require changing the back end so we minimize the work for obscurerichard. Let him reserve his energy for his family and his bicycle.

Yes! All of that!

[cvcalhoun]

@SarahBee 202652 wrote:

Those are great points, Carol. Perhaps people in similar situations who are still going into work and have a high chance of exposure should not register to be on a team and potentially drag their team points down. Would you recommend they join friends of Freezing Saddles or Team Slacker? Or is sitting out this year the safest choice?

Let me start by emphasizing I am not in charge of anything besides registration. This post has a whole long list of who is in charge of what, and you will notice my name is on it only with respect to registration. Thus, I can’t give you a definitive answer. Actually, no one can give you a definitive answer–in the immortal words of Steve O, this game “probably most closely resembles organizing a game of freeze tag on the grade-school playground.” There are volunteers who are in charge of their specific function, but there is no actual leader.

That being said, my own view is that everyone should play. Yes, you may miss some time due to quarantine. Then again, you’ll likely have extra miles if you are commuting to work by bicycle. (My mileage will be way down this year, because I am no longer commuting or even running errands.) Plus, the point of this competition is not cut-throat competition. There has been some debate about whether it has a point at all. But if it does, it’s a) to foster socialization among bikey people (although this year, much of that will have to be virtual) and b) to get people out biking during the winter more than they otherwise would. The operative expression here is “more than they otherwise would.” It’s a victory if we get someone who never rode during the winter to get out at least occasionally, or someone who biked only occasionally to try for every day even if it’s a short distance, etc. You don’t have to bike 4,000 miles during the competition (yes, someone did last year!) in order to be part of it.

And remember, too, that you won’t be the only one. Not everyone can work from home. Given the skyrocketing cases, it is a virtual certainty that someone in this competition will get COVID, and that many others will be under quarantine at some time or another. These things tend to even out over time–it may well be that every team has someone in that position. So I wouldn’t worry about dragging your team down by participating.

If you decide you want to be a Friend of BAFS (formerly known as Slacker), let me know and I will delete your registration. You become a Friend of BAFS by signing up for the Freezing Saddles 2021 Strava club and authorizing Freezing Saddles to read your miles, but not registering. Since presumably you have already done those two things, deleting your registration would automatically make you a Friend.

[rcannon100]

@cvcalhoun 202674 wrote:

everyone should play.

[rcannon100]

Coming soon (probably):

Notorious Bingo
Calvinball: The Rise of SkyHobbes!

[secstate]

I’ve been back and forth about participating this year. Last year I had a hard time keeping my motivation to ride every day… not in a bad way, just wanted to spend my time another way some days. This year, with no commute, I feel like a total slug, and I have some big ride ambitions for the summer. Can’t promise 10 miles daily but I’ll try to do something every day

[SarahBee]

@cvcalhoun 202674 wrote:

If you decide you want to be a Friend of BAFS (formerly known as Slacker), let me know and I will delete your registration. You become a Friend of BAFS by signing up for the Freezing Saddles 2021 Strava club and authorizing Freezing Saddles to read your miles, but not registering.

Thanks for clarifying how one might un-register/become a Friend of BAFS. Please un-register me so I can be a Friend. Also worthy of note is that being a Friend of BAFS doesn’t preclude you from participating in any Reindeer Games.

[cvcalhoun]

@SarahBee 202696 wrote:

Please un-register me so I can be a Friend.

Done!

[arlcxrider]

Is there a way to purge the interlopers from the Strava group? I’d like to see what kind of rides other FS participants are doing, rather than randos in S. Florida, or Brazil, etc. Several people currently on the leader board are unlikely FS riders.

[cvcalhoun]

@arlcxrider 202801 wrote:

Is there a way to purge the interlopers from the Strava group? I’d like to see what kind of rides other FS participants are doing, rather than randos in S. Florida, or Brazil, etc. Several people currently on the leader board are unlikely FS riders.

Unfortunately, the only way to purge interlopers would be to go one by one and purge people. And then we’d have to guess which ones were really interlopers. For example, someone now in Florida might be someone who was a previous FS participant, and thus eligible to compete. Conversely, someone in the DC area might be someone with no actual interest in FS, who joined just because they saw someone else join.

And it’s just not that critical. Once the competition starts, everyone on a team will join the Strava club for that team, and the leaderboard will begin picking up from the team Strava clubs rather than the main Freezing Saddles one. The ones who appear on the Friends of BAFS list will be those who:

1. Have joined the Freezing Saddles Strava club,
2. Have authorized Freezing Saddles to read their miles, and
3. Are not on a team.

#2 will get rid of the randos, because they won’t authorize Freezing Saddles to read their miles. And we don’t really consider it a priority to show standings before the competition even starts.

[Author]

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