Paczki Day

More applications today. Now we are up to 332 riders. I'm even beginning to see applications from the PALM staff. Not mine though. I mailed mine in on Jan 25, two days after I got it. This year that meant that I was mailing it in late. I wrote a check for the wrong amount, which meant that Vickie had to call me up and tell me to mail her the right amount. It looks like I'm part of the problem as well as part of the solution. It will be a while before I see my application.

One of the nice things about living close to Hamtramck is paczkis. (I even know how pronounce the word.) It's one last indulgence before Lent, made from more butter, eggs, and sugar then you could belive possible. Each paczki is 450 calories. It's a Polish tradition but I buy them from the Danish bakery by my house. (All the Polish bakeries in Hamtramck are owned now by people from the Balkans as is my Danish bakery.) I'm originally from Flint and I didn't know about paczkis until I moved here. It was an easy transition to make: the Poles have it all over the Irish here.

When I run in the morning I turn down the same street that I bike. I'm very used to seeing this part of the road. When I run now, I can picture what the road looks like under the ice and snow. And when I do this, it's easy to imagine that I'm on my bike instead of running. Winter is losing its hold. Now is a good time to take your bike in to get it tuned up for PALM. If you do it now, you won't miss any days biking. Your bike shop isn't busy and they will be glad to see you. My bike shop is even having a sale, so I'll be taking mine in this weekend.

Am I on PALM?

We are getting this question a lot lately. On February 13 Ellie sent back all the applications with regrets that didn't make the cutoff. There were 170 of them. If you were too late to get on PALM, you should have received your returned application by now and know that you are not on PALM. If you mailed in your application before Feb 3 and haven't heard from us, then the odds are very good that you are on PALM.

PALM does not have a waiting list. What we do is register 750 riders by accepting everybody that we get on the cutoff date, this year Feb 3. Then we count on 50 riders having to cancel to bring us down to the 700 rider limit. This has worked pretty well the last 2 years: the extra riders we accept act as waiting list, but they don't have to wait. Why do we have a 700 rider limit? We stay at schools and use their facilities. Schools are not hotels and some of them are small, especially in the northern part of the state. 700 riders is about what they (and our volunteer staff) can handle.

I got another packet of applications to process. With these, we are up to 283 applications processed. I'm the one who mails out the confirmation letters. I figure I'm working on applications that were mailed about Jan 23. I'll mail these out tomorrow so some of you will start receiving them on Monday, but, as you can tell, we are way behind. So far only a couple of riders have had to be added to the database from scratch. Everybody else I've processed are people who were on the mailing list, either at their request or because they have ridden PALM before. This shows that if you want to be on PALM, it is very important to be on the mailing list.

To stay in shape over the winter I run outside. I've decided that the hard part about running in winter is the snow, not the cold. Running on ruts of worn down snow and watching for patches of ice is tiring. The cold you can dress for, at least down to 5 degrees. When I got back from Florida all the snow had melted but it was still cold. I was able to run as well here as I did when I was on vacation. But, no use. There's more snow on the way this weekend.

Back From Florida

I came back from Florida last night about 9:30. There was already a packet of applications waiting for me to process. This will bring the number of riders up to 203 when I enter them tonight. I checked the day's emails and Vickie wrote me that she sent another packet of applications yesterday. I've got to hurry.

Vickie emailed me later last night to tell me that I messed up my application and that I needed to send her a corrected check. I mailed my application on January 25. She is just now getting to my application. If you mailed your application on January 25 or later, don't worry if you haven't gotten a confirmation or had your check cashed. This is proof that we haven't gotten to your application yet.

We stayed in Jacksonville Beach. Since we were on the east coast and we stayed on the beach, I got to watch sunrise starting when it was still dark and the moon cast shadows to when the sun rises out of the sea to cast a different shadow and all the steps in between. There were two days when there were no clouds (unlike Michigan). Of course, it did rain one day and, since we were in northern Florida, the temperature only got up to 65. Enough for short sleeve shirts, but not enough for shorts. I guess you need Tampa or Orlando for shorts.

I did bring back a cold from Florida. I'm glad that I have a day to transition back to winter here. (It's going to be 38 today before dropping to 25 tomorrow.) Maybe I'm lucky that it wasn't 75 or 80 there. Then 25 would have killed me.

Alternatives To PALM

As many of you know, PALM filled very quickly this year, and we have turned away a large number of potential riders. I think that PALM is a fairly unique ride in that we keep most of our daily distances to a maximum of about 50 miles, and we try to have a ride that appeals to a wide variety of ages, abilities, and biking experiences. However, there are other rides in Michigan and our surrounding states that you might decide to try as an alternative to or in addition to PALM. I will list some of them in this blog entry, and you can get details by checking out the web sites. As far as I can determine, these rides have not yet filled.

The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. www.goba.com. June 20-27, a 7 day loop ride. From what I have been told, this ride attracts the same variety of participants as PALM does. Like PALM, each year GOBA follows a different route, and this year's ride starts in Norwalk in northwest Ohio. The 7 days include 5 riding days of 45-60 miles each, with 2 layover days that include optional loop rides or alternate activities including a trip to Lake Erie or even Cedar Point. The ride limit is 3000, and the fee does not include meals. GOBA has an excellent web site, with lots of details about the ride and an excellent rider handbook.

Across Ohio Bicycle Adventure (XOBA). July 25 to August 1. www.outdoor-pursuits.org/xoba/ The ride is limited to 250 participants. This year's route will travel from Eaton to Youngstown, with some days relatively flat and others very hilly. The daily distances range from 52 to 74 miles, with a total of 405 miles. This year’s ride appears to have an ice cream emphasis.

TRIRI. Touring Ride Across Rural Indiana. June 21-27. www.triri.org. This year's route is in southwestern Indiana and includes 3 days of 65 miles, and 3 layover days with optional loops.

Rides sponsored by the League of Michigan Bicyclists. www.lmb.org. The League sponsors several rides, including the Sunrise Adventure June 19-21. Their other 2 rides all have longer days and challenging hills.

If you want even more options, you can go to www.nbtda.com, and search for rides all over the country.

We sincerely hope that all of you find a biking adventure that you can enjoy in 2009, and we hope that you will be able to join us on PALM in 2010.

Ellie, PALM Mail Granny

Feb 10: 58 degrees

58 degrees was a record for February 10 in Detroit. During the summer we do a Tuesday night ride around downtown. We start whenever the temperature gets above 50. By then the days are long enough to ride. Well, when it was Tuesday and it was above 50, I rode my bike downtown. I didn't do the official route. I rode from work to (and around) Elmwood Cemetary, to (and around) Belle Isle, to Earthworks Garden, and back to work. I rode at noon instead of after work. Since I rode in the middle of a school day, there wasn't much traffic and there was lots of sunlight. As I mentioned before, unlike my neighborhood, all the ice on the roads was gone downtown and most of the snow was melted on the grass. Elmwood was beautiful and riding around Belle Isle was great. There were puddles and there were still Canadian geese and swans. It convinced me that spring was a possibility and I think I know what it will look like. I know winter will be back soon and it will be bad, but I sure appreciated the break.

The next two days were also in the 50s. All 15 inches of ice covered snow melted in my yard. All the ice in my driveway melted. Even my compost heap thawed out. Of course, the rain helped. It makes me wonder why I'm going away to Florida this weekend. That will mean that I won't be processing applications again until next Wednesday, Feb 17. I got some today that I will do tonight, but that will only get us up to 153. I mailed my application on Jan 26 and I'm not in the 153. Unless you mailed your application before Jan 26 there is no way we could have processed it yet. Don't worry.

So far Ellie has mailed back 170 applications with regrets. We really hate doing this, Ellie especially. All of the staff are volunteers who have done this ride for years and really love it. (Ellie's done it 25 years.) To turn someone away from something you yourself love and that you know they would love too is very upsetting. If you mailed in your application after Jan 26, you don't want to hear from us until, say, next Thursday.

PALM Riders

I've entered the applications for 91 PALM riders so far. I shuffle through the applications before I enter them to see if I recognize anybody. I would have expected only familiar names and people from Michigan in first 100 riders, but I was wrong. We already have riders from 8 states, including Pennsylvania, Missouri, New York, and Virginia and I didn't recognize that many names . I would also expect that younger riders would be the earliest to sign up since the Internet is their friend. Wrong again: we have 21 riders in their 60's and 8 riders 70 and over signed up already. PALM riders continue to surprise me.

This is the weekend of the Winter Blast in Detroit. After a month of being in the 20's and 5 days of a temperature below zero, the temperature reached 50 yesterday. Everything is melting. I still can't see the grass, but now I can notice that my car is filthy. This will increase attendance at the Winter Blast, but now they'll have to make snow for the snow slide. Where is the justice?

Our friend Shelley threw a party Sunday for her Saturday bike ride crew at her apartment downtown. It was a beautiful day, not as warm as Saturday but bright sunlight. While the streets where I live have big puddles and the occasional chunk of polished ice, the streets downtown were dry: no puddles, no ice and pretty deserted. We were kicking ourselves: why didn't we bring our bikes? The party was great: lots of food and biking videos. Maybe spring and biking is a possibility after all.

First PALM Applications

I got my first 24 PALM applications to process for 2009 yesterday. I'm using these to check out the programs and the confirmation letters for the new year. As I expected most of the people were former PALM riders, but there were people who were added to the mailing list this year and a couple of people who have never been on PALM. I'm wondering how many first time riders we are going to have who aren't on the mailing list. Since we put the application on the web site a week after we mailed it out, these people would have had only one week to (maybe) find PALM, discover that the application was on the web site, download it, and mail it in. Not a lot of time.

I checked the applications, programs, and confirmation letters after I entered first 24. Sure enough, there was a bug in the confirmation letter if you got the bus to Whitehall after the ride and a small formatting problem. I fixed them and the first confirmations have been mailed. This leaves me with 700 to go. But the way I look at it, since we got our first applications two weeks ago Saturday, I'm only 2 weeks behind. This will work up to Wednesday. Two weeks ago Wednesday we got the applications for 181 riders. I'll be working on Wednesday's applications for a while.

I got another batch of 67 applications on Saturday. We've been helped by the rain in Florida. When the sun shines, Vickie rides her bike, otherwise what's the point of being in Florida? She's emailed me that she already sent me another batch after the Saturday applications. It looks like we have the registration machine stoked up.

PALM Is Filled!

Ellie picked up the mail today. There are over 700 riders that have signed up for PALM. We have reached our limit so, as of Feb 3, PALM is officially closed. Last year we filled in a little over 3 weeks on February 19. This year we filled in less than two weeks. This is really amazing, given the winter we're having. Who can believe in spring?

Vickie has hundreds of applications that she's working on. With the big rush to mail in the applications, there were a lot of errors: missing checks, signatures, names, etc. It's going to take time to contact each rider to get the errors corrected. I have the easy job: I enter the corrected applications into my PC and send out confirmation letters, but I have no applications. Tomorrow I will get the first small batch so I can test the program for this year. I'm looking forward to it but I'm 700 applications behind. It's going to be weeks before I catch up. Spring training and Lent will have started before I'm done. Please try to be patient.

There is no easy way for us to tell you whether you are on the ride or not. The applications are spread out between three people in different geographic locations. Any effort we make to determine whether an application made it in time takes away from the effort to enter it and mail out the confirmation. Even if we did compile a list of people who are on the ride, what would we do with it? Use it to send emails? Isn't that what the confirmation letters are for? Post it on the internet? Personally, I wouldn't be happy if my name was on the internet. I get enough spam as it is. Does anybody have any ideas?

I'm going to spend the last free night that I will have for a while packing vegetable seeds into envelopes for the Garden Resource Program. I've heard back from the Michigan Land Bank. I'm still on track for leasing a lot two blocks from my house for gardening. At least one neighbor there is all for it. And I have another meeting next week on a proposed community garden. I've taken pictures of one proposed site. It's completely covered in snow (surprise!) so it's hard to visualize a garden there and it's a long way from a source of water.

PALM Filling Fast

The applications are still coming in. Currently 571 riders have sent in their applications. Our limit is 700 riders. It looks like the ride will close Tuesday or Wednesday. If you mail your application today, you may or may not get on PALM depending on your geographic proximity to Ann Arbor. (The people we mailed applications to in England and Norway are in trouble.) Mail the application in anyway. We don't keep a waiting list. Instead we accept 50 or so riders over the 700 limit, generally by accepting all applications on the cutoff date. Then we count on cancellations to bring us down to the 700 limit. Since we started reaching the rider limit, about 50 riders cancel every year: things come up in June that you couldn't know in February/March. In the years where we didn't fill early, we had about 15 cancellations.

No January thaw this year, but February is starting out nicely: it's 33 degrees and the sun is shining. I don't remember the last time it was above freezing. The paper said that we've already gotten twice as much snow as an average winter but it seems a lot more since none of it has gone away. What we've gotten (42 inches of snow so far) in SE Michigan is nothing compared to west Michigan with their lake affect snow, but with the cold, our mobility has really been affected. We seem to be in a snow cave.

We did get out to see the Ann Arbor Folk Festival last night at a sold out Hill Auditorium. One of the headliners was Pete Segeer who is 80 years old. He was in a band with his grandson and Woody Guthrie's granddaughter. The highlight of the evening was Pete Segeer lining out Amazing Grace, doing the call, and the entire audience of 4000 doing the response. That was followed by all the performers and all of the audience singing This Land Is Your Land. It was amazing. I felt sorry for the performers that had to follow.