@Steve O 128920 wrote:
I think it would be good to remind ourselves why we do this crazy Freezing Saddles game every year. Here are my thoughts, and I welcome others’ perspectives as well:
1 – To have fun!
2 – To bring new bicyclists into our welcoming and friendly community
3 – To provide a little motivation to ride our bikes more during the dark, cold winter
4 – To have fun!
5 – To create excuses for doing fun things, like rides, and wacky side bets, and happy hours, and last night parties
6 – To build the community on this Forum, which supports cycling and all it entails in the DC region
7 – To have fun!
…
Agreed. Which is why I don’t think there should be a Slackers “team,” but rather a small number of former players who just don’t want to fully play the game but want to be involved. Everyone else needs to register and play on a team. That’s what makes it fun (see #’s 1, 4 & 7 above)
I have to say, all of the things in Steve O’s list will happen. I joined this forum and didn’t know really anyone. I was pretty much a lurker. I hesitantly signed up and was put on a team, I didn’t know a single person on it. Of course I was worried about pulling my weight, but in the end it didn’t matter. It got me outside in weather I would never have considered riding in. I learned more about cold weather riding, and accomplished more than I ever thought I could. I made great friends (including Steve O!) and met lots of new people!
I still see these people out and about, I met people at happy hours, started going to Coffee clubs and now I feel part of a solid, welcoming, community. There is some good natured ribbing and trash talking (Raymo…), but I never saw anyone really getting abused if they weren’t riding.
I say, if your considering the slacker team, consider carefully! Honestly, I’ll miss my teammates from last year. We had a lot of fun. We didn’t do any group rides, since people have a lot of outside commitments, but we chatted here, on Strava and at happy hour. There was lots of encouragement and support.
We even got some awards at the end, a neat scarf. I say just do it. It can be as competitive as you want it to be, but it WILL BE fun. I promise.
I can’t wait to sign up, I’ve been waiting since last year’s ended.
I will beat last year’s miles too. I got knobby tires and fenders on my hybrid, now Freezing saddles bike.
) I looked over my shoulder and saw a line of cars trailing behind me on the left lane on Clark. Sorry folks! The tweaked route lets me get to the right lane of Clark, out of the way of motorists, then make the right turn to Potomac without a traffic light, with little motorist traffic to speak of in between.