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Thanks to everyone who participated in my rapid-fire no-warning #Wikipedia20 pointless prize: consularrider, Catedrew, camiller, Serdar, kbikeva, SteveO, and CBGanimal. I also feel like I should give a shout-out to drevil, who was a prolific poster of Wikipedia links via the photo competition.

And the winner is Catedrew, whose post about great uncle Charles R. Drew sucked me into a Wikipedia rabbit hole of local and national history!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew

Catedrew, I’ll message you about getting your actual tangible pointless prize!

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Amazing! I am going to hunt down that historical marker myself and check it out. I love all of the different pieces of history – and your own family history – that are tied together in this one!
EDITED: @Catedrew, that was supposed to be my reply to you. I have not mastered the functionality of this forum and its reply options.

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Wow, that is an incredible story. I did not know the story of Mr. Williams, but what a hero. Thanks for participating!
EDITED: @SteveO, that was supposed to be my reply to you!!! Still struggling with forum formats. Ugh.

I love all the fascinating stories everyone found and shared. Looking forward to picking a favorite. And sorry to everyone for my lack of technical skills in setting this up and replying properly in the forum!
-snugglefestival, ‘junior member’

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Wikipedia’s 20th birthday is tomorrow (January 15), and I’m sponsoring a rapid-response, one-day-only pointless-prize in honor of it.

The task: On January 15, while you are out and about on your bike, take a picture of a place that has a Wikipedia page and share one fact about that place using #Wikipedia20.

Pro tip: If you need help finding a place, use the Wikipedia app on your phone. The toolbar on the bottom has a “Places” button, which will open a map showing you all the spots near you with Wikipedia pages.

Scoring: I will choose a winner based on the creativity of your photo AND the pub-quiz-worthiness of the fact you include. If there are a lot of great entries, I will award a second and third place prize as well.

The prize: Some Wikipedia swag

Full disclosure: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation and edit Wikipedia, but I am doing this in my personal capacity.

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It was great meeting team members yesterday! For our email group, use snugglefestival@gmail.com.

I will sew our team neck gaiters this weekend and get back to everyone about pick-up options soon after. I’ve attached an image of the fabric, which has a s’mores theme. Some possible team names that play off this:
* Give me s’more
* S’more miles, s’more smiles
* Let’s go s’more
* Toasty Team 19

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22325[/ATTACH]

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I’ll be there.

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FYI, the Nuclear Security Summit will be held Thursday, March 31st through Friday, April 1st in DC, with the DC Convention Center and the Marriott Marquis Hotel as the main venues. There will be many street closures and traffic restrictions. I know most of you bike commute, but for those of us who mostly get around by car, this is a giant pain and could make it very difficult to get to the happy hour that night. Just a heads up!

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I love it!

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And the winner is komorebi!

Having tried (and failed) to make a shape on a ride this month, I am more impressed than ever before with how hard it is to create Strava art. Thanks to everyone for playing along. I was impressed with all of them!

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As the judge of this pointless prize, I will permit unintentional art!

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All right riders, the deadline is drawing near for my pointless interim prize for Strava Art. Come on… you can do it! Look at some Mondrian or Rothko pieces for inspiration that’s executable on a GPS scale. Go to the thread: Pointless (Interim) Prize for Strava Art. Deadline is midnight on February 29.

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10:30 makes me very happy! I have a non-FS friend who might join us. Anyone else in?

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I am in for a ride tomorrow if you all call gather at 10 or 11 instead.

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I highly recommend this ride! The routes are low-traffic, scenic, and mostly flat. Sadly, the dates don’t work out for me this year.

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You’re welcome, KWL!

I’ve been working such long hours for the last few weeks and hit my limit today. I am so exhausted I can’t think straight. I was so very tired on the drive home that I doubted I’d be able to suffer through even a sleaze ride today. But then I changed into leggings, Uggs, a knee-length puffy coat, a hat, and my electric-green-pixelated-skull-houndstooth neck gaiter, put my hands in my bar mitts, and hit the road for a quick ride.

Two blocks later, a 30-something guy drove up next to me, slowed down his car, rolled down his window, and shouted out, “Oh my gosh, you look so cute!” I have no idea how someone could have looked at my fully winterized, puffy-coated, fuzzy-booted self and thought it was cute, but this made me laugh out loud and gave me just enough of a boost of energy to take my “long sleaze” route instead of my “short sleaze” route. Maybe it was the neck gaiter?! You all have to let me know if you start getting compliments from strangers because of them.

This is only the second time ever that a driver has slowed down to talk to me on my bike. The other time was last summer when I was biking on the road in McLean and an elderly guy slowed down and beckoned me over to thank me for riding in such a straight line and obeying the stop signs and lights. He said he’d been behind me for a few blocks and appreciated how careful and predictable a biker I was. It was adorable and made me feel great, as you always hear about rude drivers cursing and yelling at bikers, but here was a friendly driver going out of his way to say thank you to someone for being a good road-sharer.

On another note, I took the advice of the team and posted a pointless prize for Strava art. Check out the thread and submit an entry!

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