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06/02/03-
Below is a correspondence from Jim
DeGraffenreid of the Death Ride organization, in
response to questions raised by e-list posters on our website. I think
Jim deserves high marks for both addressing the issues, as well as including
his contact information so that those with questions can get communicate with
him directly. I know it's not as much fun as imagining there's a great
conspiracy at work but, as with most things, most of the problems are simply a
result of either missed or lack of communication. In that regard, I do
take issue with Jim's statement that most of this information is available on
the DeathRide website. Perhaps the "rules" are, but the explanations, as
given here, have been lacking. Had this info been posted in an FAQ-style
format on the official DeathRide website, my guess is that there would be far
fewer disgruntled posters. --Mike--
Mike,
I've just been forwarded a copy of your email page by one of our riders. It's
obvious from reading through the emails on this page that there are some
misconceptions out there about the Death Ride registration process, and I'd
like your readers to have the facts. None of this information is new - most of
it is available on our website, and the explanatory details that are not have
been shared with any rider that has called or emailed us directly asking for
an explanation:
TRANSFERS: Have been allowed in past years, and were eliminated in late
February of '03 in order to make the process fair to the majority of riders.
Of course, that meant that the minority of riders that were taking advantage
of the system had to start playing by the rules. Naturally, these riders
didn't like the changes, but our job is to make the process as fair as
possible.
In a perfect world, transfers would be a great way to match up those that
don't want to ride with those that do and weren't able to get in via the
normal process. Unfortunately, the popularity of the Death Ride caused people
to enter the process who had no intention of riding. Some would enter with the
idea of scalping the entry on the open market afterwards, others just stacked
the odds in their favor by registering themselves, their wife, all their kids,
their second cousin twice removed and their dog Spot. They then paid the $25
fee to transfer whichever entry was picked to themselves. Not only is this
unfair to riders that play by the rules, it creates an administrative
nightmare for the ride to deal with all the fake entries and transfers.
The solution was to eliminate the transfer system. Riders now have a better
chance of being selected without having to pay scalpers prices. (We've seen
Death Ride entries on ebay and elsewhere for as much as $200 in past years).
The level of phony entries is way down as well. We had over 10,000 riders
enter the process in 2002; with no transfers allowed that number dropped over
30%.
Transfers were still allowed in January, when we allowed recent participants
to register early to acknowledge their support of the ride. It turns out that
lots of riders that weren't eligible for the January process were able to find
someone that was eligible but didn't want to ride, and paid the eligible rider
to enter for them. Allowing January entrants to transfer to ineligible riders
would be unfair to the 700 January entrants that weren't picked, so when we
eliminated transfers we did it across the board. Because the rule was changed,
we did not charge cancellation fees to January entrants that cancelled their
ride reservation.
No matter when riders registered, they have the option of rolling over their
entry for the following year in lieu of a refund.
LODGING: The ride is produced jointly by the Alpine County Chamber of Commerce
and the Alta Alpina Cycling Club. Guaranteed entry to patrons of Alpine County
lodges was conceived as a way to meet the Chamber's objective of promoting
Alpine County business. It sounded good, but didn't work in practice. The
reality is that Alpine County has such a limited amount of lodging that all
the rooms will be full for the Death Ride no matter what. Just as with
transfers, reserving ride spots for those that have rooms reserved takes
spaces away from the open process and creates a huge amount of work to
manually track and process these entries. Since the process didn't benfit
anybody (except the 200 riders that made reservations each year) and caused so
many problems, we eliminated these guaranteed entries in November of 2002, and
a room in Alpine County no longer gets anybody a ride entry.
Most of the rooms in Alpine County were already reserved for the '03 ride by
November of 2002, and were reserved that far in advance because of the lodging
guarantee. Accordingly, we allowed a one time exception to the new rules as
long as the reservation was in place before November '02. Around 150 riders
received guaranteed entry to the '03 ride due to this exception, and they are
the last riders that ever will. Entries were not available to riders that
reserved rooms after November '02, nor are entries received under the lodging
program transferable.
WAITING LIST: The waiting list exists, and is made up of riders that entered
the registration process and weren't selected. As cancellations come in, they
are offered to the next rider on the list in the order their names were drawn.
There is no way to get on that list other than going through the normal
registration process. That's the only fair way to handle cancellations.
TANDEMS: There's no secret procedure for tandems - the few riders that needed
to know about it contacted us and got the info very easily. The buddy system,
which in years past solved the problem of one tandem team member getting
picked and the other not, was eliminated this year for the same reasons as
transfers. To allow tandems to participate, we allow the second team member to
register if only one entry is picked. We have a grand total of seven tandems
in the '03 ride out of 3,000 entrants, so the process has a negligible effect
on the availability of spaces. We've also got procedures in place to prevent
people from pretending they're a tandem and using the second entry on a single
bicycle.
SPONSORS: HP, Kirkwood, Team in Training Leukemia Society, and General
Electric are all given the right to buy a limited number of entries at full
price over and above their sponsorship contribution to the ride. Kirkwood uses
theirs for riders that enter the Near Death Experience training camp that they
produce jointly with Dr. Arnie Baker, and HP and GE use them for their
employees. HP and GE are both large multinational companies, and the limited
number of spaces that they are given are not enough for all of the employees
of those companies that want to participate. Accordingly, many HP and GE
riders enter via the open registration system, only taking a space through
their employer if they are not picked. Internal transfers between employees in
the same company are allowed, as the spaces are not public and there are such
a small number of these spaces that there are no more than 2-3 transfers total
among all the sponsorship spots combined.
Sponsors are important to all rides, and Death Ride is no exception. Because
our ride is filled to capacity, we go the extra step of requiring payment for
spaces that would be free at other rides. This minimizes the number of sponsor
spaces that we have, allowing as many spaces as possible to be available
through open registration while allowing us to attract sponsors to keep the
entry fee as low as possible. Very few people have an issue with our
registration cost, but I would like to point out that we work hard to keep our
fee reasonable. Clearly, we could set the fee at what the market would bear -
that would generate more money for the ride and eliminate our problem of
having more riders than we could handle - but we specifically don't do that in
order to make the ride accessible to as many riders as possible. While our fee
is higher than many rides, our expenses are as well. The cost of closing two
state highways runs well into five figures, an amount greater than the entire
budget of many other rides. Whatever profit is generated from our ride is
shared with the charitable organizations in Alpine County that make the ride
possible by providing the 700+ volunteers that work rest stops, registration,
provide meals, etc.
It's unfortunate that you don't identify those that email you, as I would like
to have responded to them directly. Please publish my contact info, as I am
happy to respond to any concerns that anybody has about the Death Ride.
There's nothing secret about any of our rules. We have a great ride in a
beautiful area, and while it's unfortunate that we have the challenge of
having more riders want to participate than we can safely accomodate, our goal
is to make our registration process as fair and open as possible so that more
riders can enjoy one of the classic one day rides in this country. Thank you
for the work you do in support of cycling and the Death Ride through your
website.
Jim DeGraffenreid
Jim: Thanks
for the response- just to be absolutely positively clear, you have no problem
with me publishing this on the website?
Also, unless I
missed it, there are two unanswered questions that have come up repeatedly.
#1: Husbands &
wives that would like to ride the event together, but have no way of ensuring
that either both are accepted or not. Couldn't there be a way for people to
submit a dual entry? Or is there and I've just missed it? I have many
customers that fall into this situation. For that matter, accepting pairs of
riders in general (in lieu of their individual entries) would seem to be a
productive idea.
#2: The
preferred status of those who have ridden the event in the past has been a
source of *huge* animosity. What is is about someone who's ridden the ride in
the past that should make it easier for him/her to get in than somebody who's
never had the opportunity in the past?
The resulting
flames (which I won't print) are incredible, particularly those who feel they
have a god-given right to ride the DeathRide because they always have, and
there's no way in hell they'd be moved over to make room for someone who
hasn't. You've inadvertently produced a cult of DeathRiders who feel they're
more special than others. Perhaps this is by intent, to make the event seem
more desirable?
One final
thought- You might consider providing detailed information about places you
can get water, food, and the roads in general on your website for the benefit
of those who cannot get it. Along the lines of "We're sorry everybody can't
get into the DeathRide, but if you'd like to experience our beautiful region
on your own, this information can help you ride it on your own" sort of thing.
Thanks again
for the response, and again, confirm that you'd like your post included on our
site and I'll be happy to do so. Ah, one last thing. Let me know if you want
your contact info included or not.
--Mike--
Mike,
Please do publish it on the site - as I said, there's nothing in it that we
don't either have on the website or have provided to riders inquiring directly
to us. Clearly there are some riders that participate only in your forum that
don't contact us for the info, so this is a way to get this info to them. We
don't want or need to have any secrets from our riders - we make our decisions
based on what's best for the majority of our riders. Definitely provide
contact info as well - that's also on our website for the public, but it
sounds like not everybody visits our site.
Regarding your questions below:
We did allow "buddy" reservations in the past. This led to abuse as riders
would not only enroll fictitious riders, but would "daisy chain" them together
in strings of 10-20 linked reservations to make sure they got in. Just as with
transfers, this made it harder for the regular rider to get in, and you can
imagine the backoffice problem we faced trying to sort this out. We would love
to offer "buddy" registrations; we just haven't been able to figure out a
workable system for doing it. Once we do, you'll see it offered.
The early registration for past riders was nothing more than a gesture of
appreciation for those riders that had supported us in the past, just as any
organization would do for it's loyal supporters. Our ride in particular has a
large number of riders that ride year in and year out, and have for many, many
years. It was this group that we wanted to reward. We understood that even
rabidly loyal riders (who existed even before the preference was introduced)
sometimes miss a year, so we decided to go back three years to allow for that.
I can assure you that we deliberately avoid doing anything in the way of
marketing to make our event more desirable. More riders interested in the
event is the last thing we want - the only reason we advertise the ride at all
is to give our sponsors exposure. Our biggest problem is that we have more
riders than we can safely or legally accomodate, and we don't do anything
deliberate to make that problem worse. Of course, we will continue to provide
the best possible support and put on what we think is a superb ride on a
fabulous course, but the last thing we want is for more people to feel that
they have the "right" to participate in the ride. Far too many people feel
that way already, and they cause the majority of our headaches with the
registration process.
Interesting idea about the "tourist info" - I'll give that some thought. One
of the problems we face as organizers is that virtually nothing is out there -
we truck in all of our food and virtually all of our water, so it would be
pretty difficult to trace the entire course unsupported. Maybe if a vehicle
was parked centrally and used as a restock point it could work...we'll
definitely think about it. After all, as the Chamber of Commerce we'd like to
see cyclists here all year long, not just for one day in July.
Thanks again for your support.
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