Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season three, episode 10, my first Thanksgiving and I'm your host, tom Butler. I have a lot of interviews this week so I'm not going to give an update here, but I do want to ask those of you who do Zwift to keep an eye out on the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club for a post on future Zwift group rides. I'm trying to find times that accommodate the most people and also what routes people like. Before Thanksgiving, I participated in my first ever Cranksgiving ride. I liked it so much that I wanted to do a whole episode on it, because I'm the type of person that likes to know what they're getting into.

Tom Butler: 0:54

Before I did the ride, I asked Paul Tomei from Cascade Bicycle Club to fill me in on what I could expect during the event. If you are interested in doing Cranksgiving next year, you can find info on your local rides at cranksgivingorg. I will put that link in the show notes. Here's my conversation with Paul. Hey, paul, thanks for jumping on with me for a few minutes here. I'm going to participate in Cranksgiving this weekend and I was hoping that you could give me a preview of what the event is all about.

Paul Tolmé : 1:31

Absolutely, tom. Yeah, this will be Seattle's 15th annual Cranksgiving event. Cranksgiving is like a scavenger hunt by bicycle and it benefits the University District Food Bank, the Bird Bar Place Food Bank and the Rainier Valley Food Bank, and this has been going on for many years. It's actually a national movement. Cranksgiving is In Seattle. It was one of the early states to adopt this great event. It takes place on November 23rd, the weekend before Thanksgiving, so upcoming this weekend and we had about 200 participants last year.

Paul Tolmé : 2:05

You turn up on your bicycle, oftentimes with panniers or saddlebags and a backpack. You'll arrive at Bird Bar Place at 9 am and you'll get essentially a list of food items that the food banks need. And you'll get a map of the various mostly locally owned stores, grocery stores, supermarkets, et cetera where you will go. Look at the list of food items that the food banks need, purchase rice beans Oftentimes it's dry goods that these food banks can keep on the shelves for a long period of time, as well as other essential supplies maybe baby formula, diapers and things that the food bank clientele need. So you'll head out on your bicycle after some instructions.

Paul Tolmé : 2:53

Lots of folks wear costumes. We had people in turkey outfits and wearing pumpkin suits and things last year. So it's quite a festive and fun event. And then you pedal around Seattle going to these various grocery stores buying some of the food items. So bring a credit card or even some cash in your pocket, plan on spending 25, 30 bucks or whatever your budget allows, and then you return back to drop off the food and at the end it's weighed. Last year we had a record amount of food collected, so we're hoping to surpass that again this year.

Tom Butler: 3:32

Well, I like that. I love that goal of surpassing last year and it'll be fun to play a role in that. Tell me why Cascade Bicycle Club is a partner in this event.

Paul Tolmé : 3:43

So Cascade Bicycle Club partners in this event because it's really a natural extension of our Peddling Relief Project. For one, the Peddling Relief Project is our volunteer bicyclist program that supports food banks around Seattle, and we've been doing that since 2020. We've collected upward of 1.6 million pounds of food and essential supplies, as well as rescuing food from grocery stores so that we're eliminating food waste and getting it to the food banks so they can distribute it to their clientele, saving on carbon emissions by doing this all on bicycles, rather than some of these trips and deliveries of food to food bank recipients would have been done by the motor vehicle in the past, and so we're doing it all on bicycle. We also partner in this in Crank's Giving because founder Tom Fukaloro, who is the founder of the Seattle Bike Blog, which is a great bike-friendly news resource for people who live in Seattle or Washington State. Tom Fukuloro is a hero of the bike movement in Seattle and he started this in what was a national initiative initially. He said let's bring this to Seattle 15 years ago and organize the first Crank's Giving, and it's been growing in popularity ever since, and it really meets Cascade Bicycle Club's mission of supporting community, showing the joy of bicycling, while also essentially doing community service by bicycle, helping out neighbors in need.

Paul Tolmé : 5:22

In this time when many of us are giving thanks for all that we have here, living in Seattle, and we'll be feasting with our families, and we want to make sure that nobody is denied that ability to have a nice meal on Thanksgiving and we are also really trying to bring down food insecurity.

Paul Tolmé : 5:43

This is a local and a national problem. Unfortunately, in this land of plenty of the United States there is a problem with food insecurity, and Cranksgiving the Peddling Relief Project are one small way that folks locally can help address that problem and spread thanks, while also gathering with your neighbors and friends, wearing costumes, getting some healthy exercise out there on the streets and exploring some neighborhoods. I know that Katie, my wife and I we've done Cranksgiving several times and it's a really fun event because you go to neighborhoods that you might not normally bike to and that requires you to sort of look at your bike maps and your Google Maps. What's the most bike friendly way to get from A to B? So there's a they call it a like a scavenger hunt by bicycle. So I encourage, we encourage anybody who has the ability this weekend coming out to Bird Bar Place Food Bank at 9 am on Saturday and Tom Fukularo will be there. A bunch of folks from Cascade Bicycle Club will be there. You'll get instructions and it'll be a fun event.

Tom Butler: 6:54

Well, I love it and shout out to Cascade Bicycle Club for being part of this, for the Pedal Relief Program too. The things that you do to bring the community together in ways that give back, I think it's wonderful. I think the cycling community really benefits by Cascade Bicycle Club doing things like this. So thanks a lot.

Paul Tolmé : 7:19

Yeah, tom, I think you're going to be there If you have a turkey costume not that you are a turkey at all, my friend, but love to see you dress up. And thank you for coming out, tom. You've been a great friend to Cascade Bicycle Club and all of our efforts here in Seattle and across Washington.

Tom Butler: 7:37

I'm looking forward to it. You mentioned Tom and I think I will probably reach out to him to kind of hear from him.

Paul Tolmé : 7:42

We'll probably reach out to him to kind of hear from him. Yeah, Tom is. You should really have Tom on the podcast because he's written. He wrote his great book last year, Biking Uphill in the Rain, which is a real history of bicycling in Seattle, as well as the power of the bike advocacy movement and why having people participate and having a coalition of the bike community here to demand and ask for change from our elected leaders. This is why Washington State is the designated the most bike friendly state across the nation year after year, because we have folks turn out and show up and push our elected leaders to implement better policies that make it safer to bike around. Yeah, so Tom's a good dude, he's a pal of mine and it would be fantastic to have him on the air.

Tom Butler: 8:35

Well, paul, that was fantastic. Thank you. I knew that bringing you on would really be valuable for looking ahead to this weekend, so thanks for taking the time to be here.

Paul Tolmé : 8:46

Happy Thanksgiving to you, your family and all your listeners, tom.

Tom Butler: 8:49

All right, now take care.

Paul Tolmé : 8:50

Okay, bye.

Tom Butler: 8:53

In addition to Seattle, cranksgiving also happens in Tacoma, washington, so I thought it would be interesting to hear about their event. I was able to get the scoop on the event from John Butler at Second Cycle in Tacoma, if you're wondering. John is not a relative. However, I would claim him any day. Hi, what's your name and what do you do here?

John Butler: 9:12

Yeah, my name is John Butler. I'm the deputy director here at Second Cycles, a community bike shop in Tacoma, Washington.

Tom Butler: 9:19

So you're involved with Cranksgiving. Is it this weekend?

John Butler: 9:25

Yeah, it's coming up. This saturday it'll be meeting up at lincoln park at 12 to 2 okay, and what is it about what?

Tom Butler: 9:30

how would you describe that activity?

John Butler: 9:33

yeah, so cranksgiving is a pretty common ride that can happen throughout the us and people do it in a lot of different ways. Some people promote the ride as like almost an alley cat, where you're going to multiple locations to purchase food and at the end everyone's trying to build a manifest of food and then at the end everyone meets up at like a food bank or someplace to donate food to people that are in need in this time of like thanksgiving. So, yeah, it's like a way to ride your bike, kind of do something that's maybe anti like black friday, more active, but you're still getting out in the craziness of it, and for a good cause why is that second cycle interested in, like being a part of that event?

John Butler: 10:17

yeah. So it's something that we find a priority to co-promote cycling culture and anyone who's trying to progress bikes in tacoma. It's like if there's a reason to get out and ride. We want to make sure that we're kind of like pointing people in the multiple directions of like different types of riding and different people that are promoting different rides in Tacoma, and we're actually starting an event calendar on our website where you'll be able to find events throughout the South Sound, but specifically in Tacoma. So things that are always happening, like you know saturday morning rides, friday morning coffee outside ride so you'll be able to find those all conveniently like on the second cycle website on the event calendar nice, so that's what we're trying to shoot for is to like, all right, if we can't put it on or if we can't help out with it, we want to at least point people in that direction.

John Butler: 11:03

Right, and that's like what's going to build, kind of the cycling community in Tacoma.

Tom Butler: 11:07

So when you talk about build a cycling community, where do you think that is now? Do you think Tacoma has a healthy cycling community, kind of a start of a community? How would you describe it, I think?

John Butler: 11:17

it's got a healthy community. I think that the people that are here are really passionate about bikes, regardless of size or how organized, and I see a lot of people like leading, leading in a good direction in their lane, where they are like efficient, and I think that's what really brings like the idea of it's a healthy cycling community, regardless of how like much it overlaps or how big it is or how many people that show up. I think it's all about how much ownership each individual feels in the community and I feel like that's really high and like that's what makes Tacoma have really good bones to be able to build this great, big, like expansive bike community. I'm really excited about that. I think that's something that, like, tacoma definitely has great bones for. The roads are a little bit wider, it's a little bit smaller. You're not restricted by bridges like in Seattle, so it's got all these really great options. It's got great outdoor access.

John Butler: 12:16

I can talk a lot about how much and how great the riding is here. So I think all it needs is that critical mass. It's like spinning up a flywheel, so right, like the more people we can get out, the more people we can get on other people's rides, the more we can get like-minded people together. It's like that's how we spin that flywheel up and then I feel like eventually it's all those things that make riding actually more fun in Pierce County and specifically Tacoma. It's going to be what, like that's what everyone's going to love and why it's going to spin faster.

Tom Butler: 12:49

So I love that and I it seems to me like cranksgiving is an opportunity for that culture, that cycling culture, the cycling community, to kind of interact and really kind of show their heart to the rest of the community. Do you think that's right?

John Butler: 13:03

Absolutely yeah. And even this is the first ride that I went on when I moved to Tacoma about a year ago, and even then it was like such a great way to kind of meet people and I met people that like later on working at Second Cycle, that were coming in as volunteers, and people that worked at the health department. So this is an event and a ride that we co-promote with the Pierce County Health Department. So they are the ones that put on the ride. We kind of show up for mechanical support and we co-promote it. That's mainly our purpose there. So they're the ones that are putting the people at the health department are the ones that are putting it on.

John Butler: 13:38

The people at the health department are also the ones that are on youth advisory boards, that are on bicycle pedestrian advisory committees, and I think it's one of the first events where I realized, like how small the group of advocacy and the people that actually like create change in tagoma for bikes. It's a pretty small group of people and so it's really cool. When you go out to something like this, you get to talk to the person who's on pp tag or who has, like, yeah, works. When you go out to something like this you get to talk to the person who's on BP Tag or who works with different aspects of cycling safer in Tacoma. So, yeah, it's kind of like meet the leaders in a roundabout way.

John Butler: 14:15

That's cool, yeah, and so that was like a great community, to kind of just like stumble into one of my first weekends in Tacoma as part of this job. Well, I'm looking forward to it and thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me a bit. Stumble into one of my first weekends in Tacoma as part of this job.

Tom Butler: 14:25

So, yeah, well, I'm looking forward to it, and thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me a bit.

John Butler: 14:29

Yeah, absolutely Anytime. And thanks for having me on. Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate it.

Tom Butler: 14:33

Yeah why not? Well, Paul and John did nothing but fire me up for participating in Cranksgiving, and I had a blast. Seeing it in action made me even more curious about the history of the event. When I spoke to Paul, he recommended that I interview Tom Fukaloro, and I'm thankful that Tom joined me after the event to talk about how it went this year, to give more history and a look at the future. Thank you, Tom Fukaloro, for joining me today.

Tom Fucoloro: 15:01

Yeah, thank you for having me for joining me today.

Tom Butler: 15:05

Yeah, thank you for having me Now. I rode this year's Cranksgiving and I had talked to Paul Tomei before I started and he said I should talk to you about the history and things about Cranksgiving in Seattle. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. I guess first off is what is your cranksgiving title? Are you like the grand marshal? What do they call you?

Tom Fucoloro: 15:30

oh geez, well, I guess, first off, thanks for writing. I don't, I don't know if I really have a title. Okay, the founder of seattle cranksgiving, I guess.

Tom Butler: 15:42

Yeah, I think that's good founder organizer yeah, what first attracted you to the idea of Cranksgiving, I guess, yeah, I think that's good.

Tom Fucoloro: 15:48

Founder organizer. Yeah, what first attracted you to the idea of Cranksgiving? Hmm, well, I had just started Seattle Bike Blog in 2010, in the summer, and I guess I had seen a story I don't even remember what it was, maybe a story or a video about Cranksgiving over on the East Coast, which is where it started, I think I wrote a post that was like is anybody doing Cranksgiving in Seattle? And nobody said anything. And so I thought, well, I have no idea how to do that. I've never organized an event in my life, but maybe I'll do it. That would be like a way to promote the blog or whatever.

Tom Fucoloro: 16:23

So the Cranksgiving, the main organization, sort of open sources the event and they encourage people to host it. You don't have to. There's no fees or anything. They just have a handful of rules, such as you can't collect entry fees to participate. It should be free to enter. You know, obviously you have to pay for groceries, but the organizing of it should not be a money-making event. You know, everything purchased is donated to food banks and the handful of other rules. But so long as you agree to those, you can use their assets, you can use the name, but very open and encouraging. It's a really cool project.

Tom Fucoloro: 16:59

So I sort of just followed their guide and, you know, made up a up a little sheet of rules for people to follow and wrote on the blog hey, meet at Cal Anderson Park and we'll do this Cranksgiving thing. I don't know the exact numbers, but I want to say it was like 20 something people showed up, maybe 30, which I was very happy with, and so everyone just kind of collected food and donated it straight to Rainier Valley Food Bank, which was in Columbia City at the time, and then we met at a park afterwards and we're like, yay, and then that was the event, yeah, and it just sort of gradually evolved from there where it was just me doing it every year by myself all the way up until 2022.

Tom Butler: 17:41

So that was that first one was like 15 years ago, right, this year was the 15th anniversary of it. Yeah, okay, did you hear things from people who participated in that first event that made you feel really good about it?

Tom Fucoloro: 17:55

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean most people had a lot of fun. And then there were a handful of things I just hadn't anticipated because I didn't know what I was doing. But people ran into like I wasn't clear enough that when I said it ends at a certain time, that like I really wanted you to be to only do what you could get done in that time frame. And there were a couple of people who were like going out for like a really long time trying to do the whole list before they came to the finish. By the time they got to the finish everyone was gone and they were a little upset, understandably.

Tom Fucoloro: 18:27

I think you know most people got that. But I realized like I probably didn't stress that I didn't like really explain that that much, and so I could see how someone thought they had to do everything on the list rather than just do as much as you can within the time period. So from then on, every other year after that, I've been very specific about the cutoff time. I do not want you to do everything. Part of the skill test of this event is time management and fighting off what you can actually accomplish.

Tom Butler: 18:57

Well, I think you did a great job of that. That was made very clear to us this year and, this being my first event, it was clear to me year and this, you know, being my first event, you know that, um, it was clear to me, so, so good job for that well you know.

Tom Fucoloro: 19:08

You can thank the handful of people in the first year who did it wrong for teaching me that lesson what are some of the challenges of pulling off a smooth cranksgiving event?

Tom Fucoloro: 19:20

well, I mean, if you're starting from scratch and you want to do it very low budget and diy, you know all the work really is being done by the riders. You know you don't even, you don't have to, so it's an alley cat race. Um, so an alley cat race is a style of bike race I think started as like a like messenger races, so it sort of tests your like messenger skills and your city navigation skills and, um, the the most basic version is that you have a start line and everyone has to ride to a certain set of checkpoints before going to the finish. And you know the, the path. The track is not close to traffic. You're, you're navigating the city, that's, you know, a fully active city, um, and whoever gets to the end after hitting all the checkpoints first wins.

Tom Fucoloro: 20:05

Um, this is basically an alley cat race, except your checkpoints are staffed by grocery store workers who are going to be working anyway, and then I add in some extra challenges, so it feels maybe a little bit more like a scavenger hunt than an alley cat. It's like somewhere in the middle. But so all I have to do is I have to come up with, like you know, grocery store locations that, um, you know several ones that are pretty easy for anyone to do and then a couple that are really difficult, so that I can, you know, because you need some sort of challenge, so that there's a clear winner at the end, you know. So you got to put a couple outliers, like this year. There were a bunch that were all pretty easy to get to if you're heading north. And then there was one on the top of queen anne, right, it's like, well, if you want to win, you got to go to the top of queen anne, but if you don't really care about winning, you should probably skip that one, right? But that, that one point, you know, might be the difference, and I think the team that won did win by one point. So, um, so you gotta, you know, you gotta put some thought into that, but in the end I'm really just handing out sheets to people and then they do all of the work, right. So it's kind of easy that way.

Tom Fucoloro: 21:13

And you know, for the first 12 years the budget of this event was like 35 and most of that went into spoke cards that I would make it, you know, go Kinko's and make them by hand the night before and then printing costs for the manifest, the lists of things that test to be completed. So it's pretty low budget event considering how much comes back from it. You know I put in 35 bucks and you know a little bit of time and what comes back is, like you know, hundreds of pounds of donations. Those were the kind of numbers we were getting when I was doing the really DIY version In 2022,. Yeah, so for the past three years I partnered with the Pedaling Relief Project, which is part of Cascade Bicycle Club, and we revamped the event to be a little more complicated, but I think it's a lot more fun now.

Tom Fucoloro: 22:04

So now there's the multiple food banks that you donate to.

Tom Fucoloro: 22:08

So people go out, they split off into two directions Some go north to the U District and some go south to Rainier Valley.

Tom Fucoloro: 22:17

You do fill out part one of your sheet and donate to those food banks and you get a second part to come back to the start line to donate at Bird Bar Place, and so you kind of get like this multi-phase event, which I think is really fun and it, you know, obviously brings in more food banks, but it also requires more volunteer power and, you know, cascade staff time to coordinate the volunteers and transport.

Tom Fucoloro: 22:44

You know make sure there to coordinate the volunteers and transport. You know make sure there's tables and chairs and tents and things where they all need to be and stuff like that. So it's not as simple and low budget as before, but I think it's still especially for a cascade event, it's extremely low budget and you know the return has just ballooned, I think, because you know cascades got their own community that they can pull in writers from and also I think it's just a little more fun and engaging this way to have like the multi-stage element and it goes a lot more smoothly when you have volunteers. So I really really, really love the current state of the event. It's in a good place. It's like we're putting in just enough to make it worthwhile enough that it we can get two tons of donations out of it, which is an absurd amount.

Tom Butler: 23:33

I think it's such a cool site. When you pull up your bike you know you're I had panniers. You know I've got food in my panniers, other people food in their packs. You pull up and and there's a bunch of green cascade cycling club t-shirts there of people that are just taking bins of this donated food inside the food bag. It's such, it's just such a cool site there about the bikes being used and the uh, the food being brought. It's, it's very inspiring yeah, yeah, I it's.

Tom Fucoloro: 24:11

I'm inspired every year. It's amazing. I've never actually done a cranksgiving, I was always just organized it. I, I love it. It's my favorite day of the year and, you know, I think for anyone who's thinking about starting one in their community, um, there's really not a lot of downsides.

Tom Fucoloro: 24:27

One of the great side effects of there being no entry fee is that people come to it with that expectation, right, so they're not expecting to be served, they're not expecting you to provide them with coffee and snacks. And you know sag wagon services and stuff like that, right, and you know sag wagon services and stuff like that, right, they know that, like, they're going to be doing all the work and they're just happy to be donating to a good cause. And so you know, even if something doesn't go exactly right, people aren't going to be like very grumpy and mad about it, because you know, they know that you're not like making a bunch of money off of them on this, right, you know like they're not being exploited here, right, it's all just like, very like, like just a very transparent event in that way. And so people come in it with that expectation, and so you just, you know people are joyful and they know that. Well, things don't go very well, it doesn't really matter. Like some stuff got donated and that was really the whole point, right, people aren't expecting like like we always have prizes at the end but no one cares if about the prizes really Like, it's not about that.

Tom Fucoloro: 25:33

Like people like having the like the structure of a competition. Some people like having the structure of the competition. It's like a motivating factor. Other people don't care about it at all and it doesn't matter which one, which way you go, because either way food gets donated and you know the structure of the competition, you know it's, it's fun. I guess it helps like people visualize in their head what this event is about before they go into it. But beyond that, it's just like it's such a um, like a low stress thing from the organizer's perspective, compared to so many other events where you know if you pay an entry fee, you're expecting it to get your money's worth right, and so if you pay zero dollars, then you know that those expectations are much easier to meet I didn't feel like there was a lot of cutthroat competition going on that day.

Tom Butler: 26:23

I feel like everybody's there to have a good time there's always a couple groups okay and they and they know who they are.

Tom Fucoloro: 26:29

Before right when they get there, they're like, you know, there's usually like four or five groups that are like we're gonna win this and so they they're very intense about it. You know, they're like. You know, as soon as they get the sheet, they divide up the tasks and they split and they all go out and they all know what they got to do and they know when they're going to, when and where they're going to meet back. You know they've already got their team ready. They've, they've picked people they know are fast, but there's only always, ever, a handful of them. And then everyone else.

Tom Fucoloro: 27:00

You know I'd say like this it's like five percent maybe of participants are trying to win. And then there's a bunch of people who are like, oh, it'd be cool to win, but like they're not going to get anywhere close because they haven't done all the planning and stuff required to win. And but you know, if it's fun to think, oh, maybe I'll win and have that motivation, then you get there and it okay, I'm definitely didn't win now, how would you rate this year's outcome as far as number of participants and amount of food donated?

Tom Fucoloro: 27:31

It smashed both records. I couldn't believe it when I saw the numbers, like I was, I was on stage like presenting at the after party when I, when the numbers finally came in and I just had that moment of like this can't be real, because it wasn't only higher than last year, which was a record itself. Last year we had a donations record but not a participants record. It was close, but it wasn't quite the record. This year blew them both so far out of the water. I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting it to be very similar to last year. It felt very similar to last year from my perspective. So when it came in so much bigger, I mean, we had what was it? 4,210 pounds of donations and the year prior was 3,700 pounds. So that's a huge increase. We had 224 writers compared to last year. We had 168 writers. So that was another huge increase. And I didn't even feel it as an organizer.

Tom Fucoloro: 28:35

My first clue should have been that we ran out of sheets. At the start line I thought I had printed way too many, but I chalked that up to oh, we must have let. I must not have stressed enough that we only need one sheet per team, and so people, teams are taking multiple sheets, which is fine usually, but maybe like, oh, maybe more people, more teams, took one sheet per person than usual, when it should have been a clue like, hey, there's way more people this year, that's why you ran out of sheets, so note for next year is print more copies have been a clue like, hey, there's way more people this year, that's why you ran out of sheets, so note for next year is print more copies. I thought I had, like I usually print way, way, way too many, so running out should have been a clue that, oh no, the numbers are huge this year you talked about cascade bicycle club.

Tom Butler: 29:18

Who are some of the other partners in and how do they contribute to the success of the event?

Tom Fucoloro: 29:24

so one partner who's not involved anymore but who was quintessential for most of them, um was swift industries. So they have their local bicycle bag maker and designer in seattle and they had this studio in Pioneer Square, kind of right by the football stadium, that they would open up as the after party for free to us, like there's like part of that. There's the how they contributed to the event was they just let everyone go into the studio, which is like a really like cool looking places. It felt like a very neat, like you know behind the scenes, look at how you know this like piece of seattle bike culture gets made and that's. It was like a cool place to have an after party and they were just very supportive of the event for years and years. So they're a big part of it, um, but they ended up closing down the shop and studio that they had there during the pandemic, which is also when the the original version of the event that had been going really steady for 11 events straight was kind of thrown into chaos. Right, our after party kind of blew up. You weren't really supposed to host events like that anyway, and so 2020 and 2021 were really weird. Like most events were Like 2020, I was just like it was entirely virtual and I was just like go around whatever your own neighborhood and buy groceries and donate them to your neighborhood food bank, and then we'll do like a zoom after party or something like. And it was fine, like people did it, which was really cool, um, but, like you know, wasn't the same.

Tom Fucoloro: 31:02

And then 2021. I didn't get started organizing it until really late because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to, and so it was really kind of half-assed. And then that's when Cascade came in. I was kind of like waffling, like should I just be done with it? This thing that it was sort of self-sustaining. Every year I didn't have to market it because people would just invite their friends the next year, and so it was kind of this thing that just kept it. But like having two years off sort of like killed it enough that I thought maybe I should just let it go, maybe it should be done.

Tom Fucoloro: 31:37

And that's when maxwell burton, who started the pedaling relief project in seattle before it got consumed by cascade. That's when he reached out to me and was like hey, should we partner with this? And so the pedaling relief project for those who don know is this amazing effort where people use their bikes to help out the logistics with some of the logistical challenges that food banks have. And so that's both like food rescue, like picking up stuff from all the various places that have food that they're not going to sell but it's still good. So usually they offer that to food banks, but food banks have to figure out how to get there, pick it up, to bring it back, and there's so many of these places that that's like a capacity issue for a lot of food banks. It's just like transportation of that stuff because it's free but you got to pick it up. So that's one thing that the Pedaling Relief Project do is they'll send people out on bikes to go pick it up by bike, which is really cool, especially starting with the pandemic.

Tom Fucoloro: 32:34

But even before that, but especially since then, there's been a big increase in the number of people who need delivery of food bank items to their homes that cannot, for whatever reason, get to the food bank itself, or it just makes it a lot easier for their lives if they don't have to go to the food bank themselves and wait in line and do all that, or they can't make the time that the food banks. You know the limited windows that they're open. They can put together. The food bank will put together like bags for them, but they need home delivery and that's a huge logistical problem. That takes a huge amount of staff time to just, you know, get those things out there. So the Pedaling Relief Project offers up to organize volunteers to bike it to everyone's homes and they can do it really quickly and takes this huge load off of the food banks themselves.

Tom Fucoloro: 33:18

It's a really cool organization and still going strong, which is amazing Like people are just really dedicated to it. It's like a lot of people like this is the thing they do for their community is be part of their Pedaling Relief Project group. So you should look up the Pedaling Relief Project and there'll be a list of all the opportunities if you want to get plugged in. But since this was going, it was the obvious partner for Thanksgiving Like, hey, let's revamp this and let's tie in the work you're doing with Pedaling Relief Project and the groups that are already existing around these food banks and let's tie that into this big event. And so it became both a way to gather all these donations but also get people familiar with their neighborhood food banks and their opportunities for volunteering through the Pedaling Relief Project. So I know a lot of Crank's Giving writers have become PRP regulars, which is the goal all along. It's perfect synergy. So I just love, love, love this version of this event.

Tom Butler: 34:14

For that reason, you know, I I think it has like a little bit of magic to it. You know kind of like doing events, you know like, whether it be seattle, portland or chili hilly or any of the cascade bike rides, there is this, this element of community and helping to build the cycling community. But I think there's something that's even deeper, like a deeper sense of community participating in something like Cranksgiving or in the Pedal Relief Project.

Tom Fucoloro: 34:48

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean it's direct community support. You know, especially in years where you know we're having like a national politics, you know, guided by hatred and negativity and distrust of your neighbors and all that, this event is like a direct, you know, challenge. It's like, no, we can get together and we can support each other together and we can support each other and we're going to demonstrate that ourselves and we're going to learn how to continue doing it, you know, the rest of the year, not just this one time before this holiday, right? So, yeah, I mean it's a very powerful experience for me for that reason too, cause, like you know, you start to lose faith in people and then you see this and you're like, no, people are good, people are good, you know, I know it, I can see it, it's right in front of me.

Tom Butler: 35:34

And you described it as a salve. Yeah, when you, when you gave your remarks afterwards that it's like there's kind of this irritation, this kind of you know, like you you talked about the hatred and and it's kind of wounding and and seeing that action and people, seeing people so enthusiastic, you know, and again, watching as the pounds of food come in, it is a salve yeah, I think it's.

Tom Fucoloro: 36:04

It's empowering to know, like, what we're all capable of. I mean, it's like the ultimate example of like you know, I guess many hands make, I guess many wheels make lightweight. I don't really know how that I'm sure there's a better metaphor in there but the idea that most people who participate don't have big cargo bikes and big trailers A couple of people do. Most people are just hauling stuff in backpacks and the panniers on the back of their bike and all of that adds up to be more than two tons. You know, when we all work together, we can accomplish this like enormous task and we can move so much together. And that's very important to understand that, because we're going into an era where we're going to have to work together a lot to counter.

Tom Fucoloro: 36:51

You know some very powerful forces out there who want to bring negativity and want to divide communities, but it's so much more fun to build community than to divide them. You go out there and you see everybody pulling their own weight and putting in their own money and the only thing you see are smiles everywhere. You, you look like nobody's feeling put out by it, and yet we've accomplished something huge together and we smiled the whole way through it and it was fun, even though it's it's sound. If, if you had told me before the event started what we were going to accomplish, I would have said it sounds impossible, but then you make it possible. So yeah, I mean it's such a cool event in that way.

Tom Butler: 37:35

I wasn't smiling the whole time we did the one climb that was kind of a little bit brutal. After we came through the Arboretum we decided to take that route, just for enjoyment reasons. And then I think we hit a hill. After that I'm coming back.

Tom Fucoloro: 37:54

I think that's what it was that's part of the uh, you know, the test of your city navigation skills, right? It's like, oh yeah, let's, it's really nice to ride the arboretum and you think, wait, how do you get from the arboretum to, you know, the top of the hill and union street? Like there's no way to do that without a very intense climb, is there?

Tom Butler: 38:16

well, it was funny because one of our team members was on a bike. Her gravel bike that she would normally ride, I guess, was down for some reason. So she showed up on a, on a bike that couldn't actually even shift into the easiest gear. You know, it's an older bike and everything. And she's like oh, you know, I'm I'm slow, you know, and you know, I bought into that notion. And then she like would beat me up all the hills. So but I, and I'm not, as I'm not, I don't spend a lot of time cycling in seattle. So you know, which was another thing for me that's kind of cool about cranksgiving is, you know you are, you get to see quite a bit of the of the neighborhoods and get around in Seattle, so that's fun.

Tom Fucoloro: 39:00

Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite things is picking the locations to send people to, and I always try to find offbeat places so you're not just going from Safeway to Safeway to Safeway, you know, like trying to find. You know, send people to like random veggie stands that I know are open year round, or the farmer's markets, if they're available, or I usually have like one standard grocery store like per list, just because I want to make sure you can get all the items and it's not guaranteed that all the other ones will have every item on the list. It's not guaranteed that all the other ones will have every item on the list. But mostly I'm trying to send people to parts of town they might not be used to, into the neighborhood veggie stand, that kind of thing, as much as I can, just to get people out of their usual paths.

Tom Butler: 39:44

So one partner sounded like it was new this year, and that was Central Cinema.

Tom Fucoloro: 39:50

They're new. For the past three years They've been there as part of the, the new version of the event. It's been very similar. The past three years we've sort of been perfecting the process. I mean, I think a testament to how well it's for it's dialed in now is that I had no idea that we had completely blown our estimate on participants, which just shows that, like you know, all the cascade volunteers and the format that we created was capable of absorbing more than I, than I thought. It was, to the point where I didn't even notice that we had gone way beyond what I was expecting. Like 190 was like the, the highest we've ever done, and last year we did 160 something. So like 190 was. I planned for 190, you know cause. I assume that's the ceiling. So when you get like 224, it's like so far beyond that I didn't even notice.

Tom Fucoloro: 40:43

You know, a big part of that is, you know, central Cinema is just a very good partner for the after party. Kevin who owns it is a pedaling relief project rider himself. He's got a cargo bike and he rides for the Bird Bar group, so that's why he offers the space at no cost to us. People buy. They make money through people buying food and drinks at the after party, but they don't even give us a limit, which is normally what they'll do is they'll say well, you have a bar limit or minimum and or minimum, you know, and if you don't hit that you got to pay the difference. But they waive that for us, which is very nice, though I imagine with 224 riders we probably would have hit it anyway. But you know it takes so much stress off of us we don't have to budget in a contingency for that.

Tom Fucoloro: 41:29

So this event is held in statistically the rainiest part of the year in Seattle. It's supposed to be a rainy weather ride. Part of it for me has always been demonstrating to yourself and to others that you can bike year-round in Seattle. This is a really great place to bike year-round. It doesn't matter if it's raining, you can still go out and go grocery shopping. Even when it's raining out, you can still go grocery shopping by bike. You can just do this year round. So it's supposed to be a celebration of that.

Tom Fucoloro: 41:59

And yet you talk about this event has a little bit of magic. When I was planning this year, I started planning with a brand new staffer at Cascade named Landon Welsh, who's now the volunteer manager and the Pedaling Relief Project Manager welsh, who's now the volunteer manager and the peddling relief project manager as of like barely a month ago. I was explaining to him like, oh, yeah, this. He's like you know well, what are we going to do about rain? I'm like, well, we, you know we should have some tents and stuff, but it never rains. On cranksgiving it's. And he's like what it's like? Yeah, this, this event is like it's plagued with good weather. I like to say so, it won't rain. And then, sure enough, like you know, it's like the week of the bomb cyclone and like really, really horrific weather made national news how bad it was. And then come saturday and like everything chills out and it's like perfect and beautiful, just for cranksgiving that starts raining again as soon as it's over I mean literally, we were pulling in.

Tom Butler: 42:51

You know, we made our last stop and it it started raining on us, as we were pulling in, to drop our food off. So it was incredible.

Tom Fucoloro: 43:00

Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. I mean we have had really rainy cranksgiving. We've had a couple and we had one where there was snow. But I got to look up the odds of not getting rained on as often as cranksgiving has, and the rain these weeks of november specifically are, like, statistically, like most likely to get rain of the whole year and so somehow we dodge it every year. But we're due, we're due, I'm. I'm excited for the next big rainy one. I want to see how many people show up, because it we haven't been tested in a while. It keeps being really nice. But I know from the past, like you know, probably a little more than half. We'll get, you know so, significantly reduced numbers. Like there's a lot of people who wake up and are like never mind, because they haven't committed nobody. You know there's no pre-registration, so nobody will ever know that they didn't, that they were going to go and then ditched right.

Tom Butler: 43:55

So there's there's no peer pressure on showing up anyway one of the key partners that you have are the food banks, obviously, and can you talk about like how that partnership has evolved over the years?

Tom Fucoloro: 44:09

yeah, it was. Um, my original plan was to rotate to different food banks every year, and so the first one I picked was Rainier Valley Food Bank in Columbia City. Because I was volunteering at BikeWorks at the time and I want to say somehow maybe they had partnered on an event or had talked to each, I don't know there was some sort of connection between BikeWorks and Rainier Valley Food Bank that had happened, and I don't even remember the was some sort of connection between Body Works and Rainier Valley Food Bank that had happened, and I don't even remember the details, but that's how they got on my radar. So I was like, oh, I'll just do them for the first year. And then they were so appreciative and so flexible with me as someone who's never organized an event in my life, they were just like what do you need? And I was like I don't know, people are going to show up with stuff to drop off. And they were like, okay, you know, and they figured it out as it happened. And then they sent me the weight totals at the end, which I didn't even know that they could do that, and so I was very surprised, but they were just so easy to work with and so thankful for it.

Tom Fucoloro: 45:08

And they had such a good story too because you know, this was 2010. So this is like the crest of the um the recession, right when people are hurting the hardest. And they had seen this huge increase in the amount of people who are coming to their food bank that year, like compared to even just a couple years earlier and the year before. So they their last saturday before thanksgiving happens to be their last distribution day before thanksgiving, happens to be their last distribution day before thanksgiving, so it's always their busiest day every year, which is also the day we hold cranksgiving. And they said the year before they kind of did run out of food and they still had people in line, and so this year we, the writers, came in and they basically were like collecting the food and just like putting it on shelves and it was disappearing, and so we like wow, we restocked their shelves, like as they got empty.

Tom Fucoloro: 45:56

Basically, it was kind of it was very good timing both, you know, just like the fact that we started it that year and that you know they were still trying to adjust this new demand cycle that had suddenly risen, you know, and overwhelmed all food banks, but, you know, including them, and so it's kind of like this really good synergy.

Tom Fucoloro: 46:14

And so that story, I think, like I knew, I thought it was cool that we were donating to food banks, but then they really helped me understand, like no, like people have food on their table because of these writers donated this food, and I think I just hadn't like fully internalized the scale to which this event could be helpful, and so that was very motivating for me and I was just like, well, we'll just do Renovate Valley Food Bank every year. So that's why they've been the recipient every year and we just have added to them in recent years. But I'm very committed to that organization, just because at this point we're part of their cycle, committed to that organization, just because, you know, at this point we're part of their cycle, right, we're part of how, how the thanksgiving week works for them, um, which I love.

Tom Butler: 46:58

I love that role and bike works, provided uh, volunteers or they, they kind of provided logistical support for them this year. Is that right?

Tom Fucoloro: 47:06

yes, so rainier valley food bank. A few years ago they moved to a larger and better, look a better facility. They were in like a very small space it's actually really hard to get to for for people to drop off stuff because it's in a place that doesn't have good, you know, pedestrian safety and stuff and people will be lined up down this like skinny little sidewalk that next to this really busy street. It probably wasn't very comfortable to be a patron, but they did a lot with very little. It was very cool, but they knew they needed to get a better space for folks, and so they were able to raise money to move down to Rainier Beach, which is a much better facility for them.

Tom Fucoloro: 47:50

But it also would make the South end ride go really, really, really long, perhaps too long for people who are just being casual. You know like the racers could get there and back easy. It would probably end up being something like almost twice as long as the U-District riders, and so if we wanted to have each direction be roughly equivalent, we needed to find another drop-off point, and so Bike Works being in Columbia City is perfect, and they offered to be the host for the drop-off and collect all the stuff and then take it all the rest of the way to the food bank, and so they had their volunteers helping to bring in the food and organize it and get it taken care of and basically run that that spot, which is awesome. That's very, very wonderful of them.

Tom Butler: 48:37

it's a great way to like, evolve them because they're such a good organization and you know it's very helpful to have them contributing in that way so this is kind of a I don't know, a complicated question, I guess, but do you feel like there's something important to show that that kind of activity can happen, whether it's Petal Relief Project or Cranksgiving under human power on bicycles in a city?

Tom Fucoloro: 49:03

No, absolutely Absolutely. You know. I think you know, especially when I started this event, there's still such a focus on bicycling being like a thing you do for recreation or maybe for commuting, but like the idea of like carrying stuff around and, you know, running errands and that kind of thing, it always seemed like that was like a very secondary thing and people still thought it was kind of weird, I think. I think it's normalized a lot since then. But yeah, the idea that you can go grocery shopping on a bike, you know that's. It sounds simple enough, but it's kind of a. In order to be able to do that, you have to solve a handful of problems that will also just so happen to get you set up to do all kinds of things on a bike.

Tom Fucoloro: 49:50

Do all kinds of things on a bike, you know. You know you have to figure out okay, well, I need a way to carry stuff, and probably more stuff than I can fit in the backpack. So now you're figuring out how to put, like, a rear rack on your bike so that you can put bags on the rack, or you're trying to figure out how to get, you know, a basket, or you know whatever. The solution is that you find you got to figure out something for yourself in order to accomplish that, and then, once you have that, well, you can do all kinds of things In addition to grocery shopping.

Tom Fucoloro: 50:20

Right, and especially if you're getting all that set up to work in the rain, you've got to have all your weather gear, you got to have your fenders so that your bags aren't getting sprayed with water and your feet aren't getting sprayed with water, and it You've got to have your fenders so that your bags aren't getting sprayed with water and your feet aren't getting sprayed with water. It's sort of like a task that, if you can do this, that you can do almost anything in the city that you need to get done with your bike Just through the simple act of going grocery shopping on a bike. So, yeah, it's a little bit it's like a subversive activity in that way, because it sounds simple, but really we're we're tricking you into becoming a you know, a bike radical. So when someone who does everything on a bike, that's that's. That's my real goal. I like it.

Tom Butler: 51:05

That's awesome. What do you look for in the future as far as cranksgiving is concerned?

Tom Fucoloro: 51:11

Yeah, I personally really like the scale that it is right now. The success this year has me waffling a little bit, because I we did zero marketing this year at all. I don't even know if what emails cascade sent out about it. I don't think they sent any dedicated emails to members. I think it was probably listed in a calendar somewhere. Maybe it was listed in an email. You know, I just did a blog post and posted on social media. We passed the poster around and that was it. So what's really cool about this event is that most of the people who show up are either repeat writers or they're people who've been dragged along by repeat writers, become first-time writers that way, and so it's community built in that way. It markets itself just through word of mouth, which is really cool. So the fact that it was so big this year and we did zero marketing raises some interesting questions about what the future of the event could be, cause the problem is, if it gets much bigger, then we have to scale up, and if we scale up, it's going to trigger a whole series of changes, right? So, like you know, if it gets much bigger, we'll need a new after-party venue, because we basically filled it this year. So if we want to go bigger, then we'll have to figure out either a different venue or a way to like spill out into the street in front of the cinema or something like that, right, in which case then we're getting permits right, and then you know, and then we're doing like community meetings and stuff to or whatever we need to do to make sure the neighborhood's on cool with the idea of having a street party, and it just gets more complicated that way, and then it also means, well, our start line. We probably need a permit there and figure out a larger venue for the start line, and you can see how it just snowballs to become a big event which could be cool. I think that the people are showing us that there's demand for that. If we actually marketed it and put effort into getting as many people as we possibly could and then planned around a much larger crowd, the numbers could absolutely balloon. But then it becomes a different kind of event, doesn't it? It's less DIY. I think part of the appeal is how few resources to go in to it to get back so many resources. That's that's one of my favorite things about it.

Tom Fucoloro: 53:50

I I'm also not much of an event planner. So if it gets much bigger, I probably have to become more of a figurehead and, like actual, like professionals, will have to take over, which which is, you know, already kind of the case, cause Cascades got actual event planners but, like you know, they would have to take over the whole thing. Really, yeah, I'm already like at my limits on this. Personally I'm I'm a scattered, unorganized person. You know I'm a blogger. I write, I write today the things that come to my mind today. That's how I operate, and I'm not tracking details of everything you need All the tiny little things no one ever notices that are required to make a big event work. So I don't want to get in the way of the event growing, but also I don't want to lose sight of what's really cool about it either. So, yeah, it's in a position right now.

Tom Fucoloro: 54:47

I would be happy to repeat what we did this year, every year, forever, with small changes or whatever. But that scale I personally really like it. I don't know if it needs to be bigger. So if it got bigger, we'd probably bring in more food banks. It would become a much more sprawling large event and we'd have more partners involved, which is really cool. We'd have more food on it donated to more food banks, which is really cool, and more participants as well. It could really become. I think it could become a really big thing, but it would. It would also be very different. Really big thing, but it would, it would also be very different. So, yeah, it's kind of in this weird little spot right now where in the next year we'll have to I'll be in discussions with folks at cascade about what they see for the future of it well, it's kind of a cool problem to have.

Tom Butler: 55:36

I can really relate to like it changes the event, you know, from more of a grassroots thing to maybe something that's a little less homey, but at the same time, if there's so many people that want to participate and make a difference in the community, that's kind of a cool thing too.

Tom Fucoloro: 55:58

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 55:59

So it'll be fun to watch see what happens.

Tom Fucoloro: 56:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just like I have like a nightmare. Be fun to watch, see what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just like I have like a nightmare. They'd be like cranksgiving, you know, sponsored by honda or whatever. You know it's like because you have to get a sponsor to pay for the added costs. Yeah, right, where, right now we don't need a sponsor.

Tom Fucoloro: 56:15

You know cascade is basically, I mean, more or less donating. They're contributing the staff time for the volunteer coordinator and, you know, peddling relief project manager to like put a bunch of their time into this instead of their other work. You know, yeah, like that's their contribution. And then they also have a, a staff day where everyone's in the office and they invite me in to uh assign people tasks, like you know, helping to make the spoke cards and things like that and make all the signage and you know whatever needs to like be created by hand. So it's like arts and crafts day at the cascade office. So you know all that has monetary value. So, like it's not, like it's unsponsored. You know cascade is essentially sponsoring it. But, um, you know, if it got much bigger and we're getting permits and paying for venue spaces and all that, then yeah, I mean we need an actual sponsor. And then that raises questions, right, like you know. It becomes a whole different kind of event.

Tom Butler: 57:15

Well, I need to ask a question here and I'm prepared for whatever answer you give. But we came up with a team name. You've seen a lot of team names, so I'm looking at you to give you know thumbs up, thumbs down on our team name, which was mashed petals and gravy. Yeah, okay you can't see. It doesn't sound delicious, but well, I can't see this, but that was too enthusiastic thumb to, thumbs up, so oh, yes, yes, sorry, I forgot we're not doing video.

Tom Fucoloro: 57:45

That's right.

Tom Butler: 57:46

Yes, enthusiastic thumbs up, I love it well, tom, thank you so much for taking the time to to be here with me um thank you so much for writing yeah, well, it was a blast and, uh, good luck in the future, as you're planning and seeing what's going on and, like I said, I'll be following it. I'll be participating again. I know that the people I participated with, which my daughter, my son-in-law, were the two of the people that participated. We're all looking forward to it again, so we'll be following it Great, great.

Tom Fucoloro: 58:23

I'll see you next year, all right.

Tom Butler: 58:25

Bye now. Judson Scott has been a guest on the podcast in the past and he said he was going to be doing Cranksgiving this year. While I didn't get the chat with Judson before or after the ride, I did hear his trumpet charge so I knew he was there. I wanted to get his thoughts about Cranksgiving. Well, I know that Judson did the cranksgiving event because I heard him, and so, Judson, thank you for joining me to talk about how your cranksgiving went.

Judson Scott: 58:56

Well, thank you, Tom. You heard me, but you didn't say hello. I can't believe it. I was surprised when I saw you posted about it and I hadn't seen you on the ride at all. I can't believe it.

Tom Butler: 59:04

I was surprised when I saw you posted about it and I hadn't seen you on the ride at all. Well, you guys are too fast. We actually pulled in late to the start, so we were busy trying to get everything and you guys kind of got off as almost everybody did before us. Tell me, have you?

Judson Scott: 59:25

done Cranksgiving in the past. No, this was my first one. Cranksgiving, I think is always the Saturday before Thanksgiving and I usually have a concert that night and I'd never done Cranksgiving and I was like I don't know if I can ride Cranksgiving and then go play a concert and maybe I could. But boy, that nap I took when I got home was really good. That's awesome.

Tom Butler: 59:49

Well, so it's possible that this might be your first and last Thanksgiving, given that.

Judson Scott: 59:55

Well, we'll see. I don't know. You know things change and you know I might say no to the concert and yes to the ride.

Tom Butler: 1:00:02

Because riding is fun, nice. So what was it like? How would you tell people about that experience?

Judson Scott: 1:00:09

It was great. It was really a lot of fun. I was on a team of four. Jamie Marconi invited me to ride and then I wrestled Bradley Hawkins into joining us and Jamie got one of his friends at work, orion, to join us, and so the four of us rode. You know Cranksgiving and it was a fun team. It was fun to meet Orion and, yeah, it was great.

Judson Scott: 1:00:35

The biking events are. I mean, it's just, I don't know, there were like 250 or something like that, bicyclists doing this. And you know, when you just suddenly send that many cyclists out onto the roads, we kind of take over. Uh, it's, and it's kind of fun.

Judson Scott: 1:00:53

I mean, um, you know, the time we were going, traffic was pretty light anyway, and you know you get four or 10 bikes going down a road and everyone just kind of has to like, okay, they were there first. You know you'd pull up to an intersection and then you'd see somebody coming, like you know, from your right that was clearly going to the same place to do the same stuff. They'd just taken a slightly different route, you know. So it's just this fun, wonderful, mass event and it's. It's also weird because, if you think about it, you know, sending 250 people out on bicycles to collect donations is pretty darn inefficient. I mean, you know, if we'd all just written checks that I, I don't know it might've been more efficient, but that's of course. That's not what it's about. It's about the ride and the community building, so it was just great fun.

Tom Butler: 1:01:55

It was fantastic. You know, I mentioned that I was riding with my daughter and my son-in-law and that was really fun. And then we added a fourth someone that was looking for a team and it was really great getting to know her. And then we added a fourth someone that was looking for a team and it was really great getting to know her, and so I feel like we had the full deal experience where we had fun together. We got to meet a new cyclist that we didn't know before. We got to cycle around Seattle and just everything about it was good.

Judson Scott: 1:02:23

Great, great. Well, my team came in fourth.

Garren Miler: 1:02:27

Oh.

Judson Scott: 1:02:28

A little flexing here. But yeah, marconi's mobile market came in fourth Okay.

Tom Butler: 1:02:35

Well that was probably, you know, somewhere around 200 slots higher than us.

Judson Scott: 1:02:45

Well, I will say Orion. So, Jamie, when we were setting this whole thing up, he said, yeah, I invited Orion. He always rides a fixie, so I don't know what that's going to be like. Well, and then Orion showed up on an e-bike with a bucket. Nice, yeah, it was because you know any any of the canned goods. You know, orion was carrying all the heavy stuff. So that was that was great, yeah that's awesome.

Judson Scott: 1:03:13

Our team was called mashed petals and gravy ah, excellent, oh, that's good, that's good, yeah, so we felt good about that, but we did not.

Tom Butler: 1:03:22

We done did not make it in the top 10 and we did not randomly get our team name called out. But there's always next year.

Judson Scott: 1:03:30

Well, there you go. Yeah, so you need somebody on an e-bike there to carry the heavy stuff.

Tom Butler: 1:03:35

We did have someone on the e-bike, but it was not equipped with any racks which they had a backpack on, but uh, but it worked out. Okay, Tell me how you see cranksgiving contributing to the cycling community.

Judson Scott: 1:03:52

Well, and I don't know what you think, but I, I, to me it feels a lot like a mini STP. You've got people dressed up in crazy costumes. I don't know, did you see the hotdog guy? Or? Um, yeah, you know, and so so you've got some crazy costumes.

Judson Scott: 1:04:04

I don't know. Did you see the hot dog guy or? Um, yeah, you know, and so so you've got some crazy costumes. There was a Santa Claus. Orion had some hat that he built. He had it like strapped to his, his helmet. That's like it's some character from a video game that I did not recognize at all. And so there's, there's this crazy whimsy about the event and you know, everybody's setting out kind of taking over the roads a little bit, and, and of course you know it's for a good cause, yeah, I, to me it's. It's really well, I think your average cyclist is a little more caring, a little more giving, because we've all been out there, you know we get our second flat and we don't have another tube or our patch kits empty or whatever, and we've all been rescued at one point or another, you know, to some degree. And so there's definitely I think cycling is a very community oriented activity anyway, and of course there are those sharks called cars that we all try to protect each other from.

Tom Butler: 1:05:10

I think that one of the cool aspects of it is what you were talking about earlier, where bikes kind of take over the street. You get this glimpse of what would it be like if the roads were made for biking instead of cars.

Judson Scott: 1:05:26

It would be great. However, I went to Amsterdam this year. We did a little bike tour in Amsterdam, which was awesome, but you know what Bikes can be really aggressive too. There's, like, you know, in Amsterdam there's like a road for cars, there's a bike lane and there's a, you know, like a pedestrian path and you know you get on the wrong side of one of those lines and like the bicyclist is not going to cut you any slack. If you're a pedestrian, it's a little. Yeah, I don't know. It's like. I just wanted to say you know, guys, you got to remember what it was like when you were the one to own the road, you know, and like cut the pedestrians a little slack a little. You know, I never saw anybody get hit, but boy they, yeah anyway. So it would be lovely. If you know, the cycling infrastructure was even better and you know, in Seattle it's pretty good. It's not awesome, but it's pretty good. Well, above average, I'd say.

Tom Butler: 1:06:31

Yeah, and it seems like it's getting better all the time, and I appreciate the work that is done by Cascade Bicycle Club to advocate for more and better bike infrastructure.

Judson Scott: 1:06:46

Yes, absolutely yeah, they, they've. We are so lucky to have Cascade Bicycle Club here. They've been transformative.

Tom Butler: 1:06:55

Well, thank you, jetson, so much for jumping on and sharing your perspective and your experience, and I also want to wish you good luck coming up here. I know you have a lot of events to play at and hopefully all those go smooth.

Judson Scott: 1:07:12

Well, thank you. Yeah, no, it's a busy, busy time of year for a travel player, so it's uh, it does cut into my cycling time, which I don't know. I don't feel good about that.

Tom Butler: 1:07:28

Well, something has to pay for the bikes.

Judson Scott: 1:07:30

Yeah, no, that's for sure, that's for sure. Oh, and I just got new wheels, so I'm all excited. It's a good time to be buying stuff. Lots of sales right now.

Tom Butler: 1:07:41

Well, again, good luck this season, happy Thanksgiving and we'll talk to you later. All right, good to talk to you, tom. Bye, bye-bye. I'm going to finish up the focus here on Cranksgiving by interviewing a couple of my teammates and two people who are very dear to me McKenna and Garen. I am now joined by Garen and McKenna. How are you guys doing?

McKenna Miler: 1:08:02

Fantastic Doing great, Awesome.

Tom Butler: 1:08:07

Now, while you are not over 60, you deal with a 60 plus cyclist all the time me and I just want to say how much I appreciate how you treat your over 60 cyclist.

McKenna Miler: 1:08:17

Well, we love you so much I don't. I don't feel like we're particularly being accommodating to you. I mean you and I are basically at the same level. I mean you're way better than me, but like I work to keep up with you, so it's just really fun to go on bike rides with you.

Garren Miler: 1:08:34

If accommodating you mean keeping up with, then yeah, I think we're doing a great job.

McKenna Miler: 1:08:38

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 1:08:39

You guys are being very kind. And, McKenna, I think you and I both know the only reason that you have to work to keep up with me is I spend far more time out on the bike than you do. It would not take much before I was struggling to keep up so well. I wanted to talk to you guys about Cranksgiving, because we participated together in it? And I guess the first question is what generated your initial interest in Cranksgiving?

McKenna Miler: 1:09:09

I mean, to be honest, for me it was you. But also even when you said that Cranksgiving, I was immediately interested because I've been wanting to participate in the Pedal pedal relief project for a long time and I haven't had an opportunity to do that, I mean ever since we really started biking. I was like, oh, this is something I can really do to help people. And so when you said Cranksgiving and kind of an isolated event that's very structured, I was immediately interested and absolutely just yes.

Garren Miler: 1:09:44

Yeah, of course, you were the one that told us about it. I didn't really have it on my radar before that, and so that was kind of what prompted the initial interest in Cranksgiving. And what's even more fascinating is we weren't alone in being people who just heard about it from a friend or an acquaintance, because when we showed up at the start line that was one of the questions they asked was how many of you guys heard about this from a friend or someone you know or family? And about half the crowd raised their hand, I think. So I really thought that was cool, that people that had been involved in this were gathering up their friends and family and getting more people involved in it, and I thought that was really cool.

Tom Butler: 1:10:20

It is interesting that they really don't do any promotion of it. You know, I think Cascade Bicycle Club sends out a notice along with a whole bunch of other cycling news, and you know they're not. They don't need to to really promote it to get great turnout, which is a fantastic comment on the cycling community in Seattle. I think One of the things that I think was kind of cool that I didn't have any idea of until the very last minute was that one of the food banks is like right in your neighborhood, and so I'm wondering what you thought about that, if you like. Did you find about find out about that at the last minute? Or what did you think about having the benefit that close to home?

McKenna Miler: 1:11:10

It made it easier, for sure, that we could just get up and basically bike from our front door five minutes and go. It definitely made it easier. It's cool to hear about local places that we can get involved with for other events, so it felt like we were getting more plugged in. I mean, since we've moved here to this part of Seattle, that's been a big goal of mine. That I don't feel like I've made much traction on is finding places to really plug into the local community. Knowing that Bird Bar is in our community right here that we can get involved with is super cool.

Tom Butler: 1:11:47

I'm sure you had some thoughts in mind about what this was going to be like, kind of imagining what it was going to be like. How did it compare to your expectations?

Garren Miler: 1:11:54

I thought it was pretty well in line with what I expected from it. The amount of cycling was kind of something I didn't realize was going to be as much as it was. We ended up biking I mean, probably almost 20 miles by the end of it, and we could have biked more had we not been really pushing it. I was expecting a really leisurely kind of ride around the neighborhood, and then the fact that we were on bikes was just going to kind of be a side note to the cherry work we were doing. But as a matter of fact it was a lot of cycling and a lot of hills and a lot of climbing.

Tom Butler: 1:12:29

It was actually a decent workout throughout the day, so I appreciated that about it as well. How about you, mckenna? How did it line up? Did you have many expectations?

McKenna Miler: 1:12:33

I honestly didn't have many expectations about it. I had kind of an idea of what the riding intensity might be like and I chose to ride our e-bike for the day, and so that was great for me. We wore backpacks, so typically we'd have a rack on the e-bike that I could fit more on, but the backpacks worked great. But kind of I was more thinking about logistics, but it definitely exceeded my expectations when it came to the community aspect and feeling a part of something that makes a difference. Hearing Tom talk at the beginning and just the different volunteers and how much of an impact this has made in the past and how many more people were there really made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself and that was very fulfilling in this holiday season was very fulfilling in, you know, this holiday season.

Tom Butler: 1:13:29

It's funny. You know it was really fun to be part of the record. You know, 4,200 and whatever pounds of food which exceeded by a good amount the previous record. I found that to be a really fun thing to be a part of.

McKenna Miler: 1:13:40

Absolutely.

Tom Butler: 1:13:42

And I'm wondering about the trip through the Arboretum, which I think was fantastic to do. How did that come about?

Garren Miler: 1:13:50

Yeah, we were debating on kind of the best way to get from the U District, you know, back here to the Central District, and obviously the Arboretum is an option when you're going that way. It's not necessarily the most direct route, but I mean it's obviously a beautiful ride, a beautiful park, um, and so we just decided to, you know, maybe maybe kill an extra five minutes or so by taking the the long, the long route, the scenic route, but I think it was really worth it. I enjoyed going to there.

Tom Butler: 1:14:16

We don't know about you guys oh, that was great I really enjoyed it and you know to me like it's kind of something about cranksgiving and A lot of events we do, you do a set route and with Cranksgiving you go out, you're going to end up over here, you know, and you kind of figure out where you want to go, and so us deciding to take a little more scenic route. I think that was a fantastic choice.

Garren Miler: 1:14:39

Yeah, it kind of makes me feel like more of a cycling adventure than just a ride, Like I mean, you're really on a mission and there's a lot of variables and you really don't know how your day is going to go, and that was a lot of fun.

Tom Butler: 1:14:51

Do you see yourselves participating in Cranksgiving in the future?

McKenna Miler: 1:14:54

Absolutely, yeah, 100%.

McKenna Miler: 1:14:56

I kind of mentioned how big of a deal it was for me to be part of something that really gives back to people in need in this time of year.

McKenna Miler: 1:15:05

I mean Thanksgiving has kind of taken on a different meaning for me in you know, over my life, and so for me it's it's a really important time of year to focus on, like the truth of what happened at that original Thanksgiving time.

McKenna Miler: 1:15:23

I mean thinking about the Wampanoag people and Native American people and how the fallout from that Thanksgiving scene that we have that we think of and we teach in American schools and the things that we don't teach in American education, and how it's important to really remember and to really listen to Native voices and to their perspectives on this holiday. And so for me it's a great time to focus on family, but it might even be more important to me to really focus on how can I give back, how can I contribute to change and contribute to lifting people up, and I feel like Cranksgiving was a great example of okay, we're going to go out and we're going to have a fun time with the people that we love, and I got to cycle with you guys and that day was so much fun, but we're also going to use our resources to give people in need resources to have a great holiday themselves.

Tom Butler: 1:16:27

I think it's important what you're saying, because there is this event that we call Thanksgiving. Part of it, I think, has always been anment that the Native American people of that region played a vital role in the survival of the Europeans that came to this country, happened to those people, whether it be disease or whether it be a spirit of conquering people. I think that it's a really good thing that you are wanting to acknowledge kind of a darker side of it as well.

McKenna Miler: 1:17:19

And it's not just acknowledging the history, it's acknowledging currently what's happening in this country when it comes to the relations with tribes and with Native American First Nation people and wanting to really change some things each day and I have to be really honest that I didn't even know that existed until you told me that.

Tom Butler: 1:17:49

I think that is a comment on where we are as far as acknowledging and really being comfortable with things that happened that we would never want to repeat, and I think what you're saying is there are some things that are happening that should be acknowledged and should try to figure out a different way of being in our relationship with First Nations or Native peoples.

McKenna Miler: 1:18:18

Absolutely, and one thing that I'm really grateful for is to live in Seattle. Seattle is the largest city in the world to be named after an indigenous person, chief Seedle, and there are a lot of organizations working here that we can get plugged into, and that is absolutely one, an area of focus for me. That's really important.

Tom Butler: 1:18:43

That's really important.

McKenna Miler: 1:18:53

Thanksgiving has become more complex to you than just a time to celebrate when Europeans came to this continent? I mean definitely. I truthfully would say I don't celebrate Europeans coming to this continent and I recognize who I am and where I am, but it is hard to look past a terrible, horrible history. I would be more comfortable saying that I am happy to celebrate Thanksgiving, not necessarily Europeans coming to North America, but that the original context of what we call Thanksgiving is a harvest festival that was celebrated by Native people and the Wampanoag Tribal Confederation celebrate, you know, the harvest time in abundance and be thankful as we head into the darker months of the year. I would be more comfortable celebrating and I am more comfortable celebrating that than necessarily a feast at a table that never specifically happened.

Tom Butler: 1:19:53

I like that and I think that one thing as a family, that we look for ways to be active on Native American Heritage Day and that that becomes a time for us to really think about what is the true history, to be educated, to be open, to be transformed in the way that we think things by what really happened and then, at the same time, how do we contribute to a better way?

McKenna Miler: 1:20:24

That sounds like a fantastic idea and I just kind of want to put out there. It's one thing for us to say all of these things, but it's even more important to listen to the Native voices out there that do have tons of resources on learning about the true history and what you can do during Native American History Month and on Native American Heritage Day.

Tom Butler: 1:20:45

Yeah, native American History Month and on Native American Heritage Day, yeah, so that's a task that we have. I think for the next year is we'll continue to look forward to Thanksgiving and find people who can reach out to. It's like, what can we be doing that would be positive on? And I think every year it's the Friday after Thanksgiving, right, I mean, that's consistent, and so you know what are the things we can be doing that day. So I I'm loving this. I'm loving um embracing um new family tradition. That could be a really cool thing.

McKenna Miler: 1:21:18

That sounds really really good. I'm really excited for that.

Tom Butler: 1:21:21

Nice, okay. So here's an important thing that we have to talk about. We this year were team mashed petals and gravy.

McKenna Miler: 1:21:31

Best team name and we didn't even get a shout out.

Tom Butler: 1:21:34

We didn't, but Tom Fuccaloro gave us two enthusiastic thumbs up when I told him about the team name.

McKenna Miler: 1:21:42

I love it. I think they really need to incorporate listing out all the team names, because I'm sure there were some other fantastic ones that we didn't get to hear either.

Tom Butler: 1:21:52

Well, here's the thing. Any question that we'll keep that team name next year?

McKenna Miler: 1:21:58

No, I feel like we'll definitely.

Garren Miler: 1:22:01

Absolutely. I love that name and I can't think of a better one.

Tom Butler: 1:22:04

We are team mashashed Pedals and Gravy, and next year do we need some kind of vests that bear our team name and logo? Do we need to be flying a flag off of a bike that declares who we are? What are we going to do?

McKenna Miler: 1:22:26

I think we have to reach out and be powered by potatoes.

Tom Butler: 1:22:31

Yes, okay, so we got some work to do. Reach out to the potato commission. So is a powered by potato jacket of some kind? Is that enough?

McKenna Miler: 1:22:47

I think we need something we can attach to our helmets. I saw a lot of people doing stuff with their helmets. I thought that was really fun. Potato helmets, maybe, a cap that we put over it to stay warm, or something.

Tom Butler: 1:22:58

I think there is something there okay, so I will be reaching out to the potato commission and and saying next year we are full on powered by potatoes, so yeah, we might need to have bags of mashed potatoes that we're slinging as we go by. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, all right, a crock pot. You know we're on an e-bike, we've got a battery, we can have a crock pot with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Tom Butler: 1:23:27

All right, we've got a lot of work to do, but I just thank you guys so much for doing Crank Sous Vide with me. I'm really excited. You're excited about doing it again and it's just a really fun time.

Garren Miler: 1:23:38

Looking forward to it again.

Tom Butler: 1:23:44

Talk to you later. Bye. Well, that got pretty serious there with McKenna, but I was being genuine when I said that I think it is important to consider the complexity of celebrating Thanksgiving. I am super thankful we have found something in Cranksgiving that feeds our desire to give back while at the same time being a super fun cycling event. However you are spending your holidays, I hope that you are still finding time to get in some great rides and remember age is just a gear change. Thank you.