TrojanHorse

They skipped last year for reasons but I see no indication they'll ever start back up again. That was kind of a convenient century on roads I never ride...

nesdog

Cruising no longer exists in its current form. They set up a members only picnic ride in its place. No idea if the full event will return. Haven't heard much conversation on the club rides.

I volunteered to work a rest stop one year and have ridden it many times. Always enjoyed the day.

Beachgrad05

Well that sucks. I rode that in 2015 and it was a tough ride. I felt one of the lunch pit stops was terribly far from the prior stop and some of the roads were really tough gradient wise but overall I enjoyed the event. Oh...my biggest complaint is that the BEER guy packed up the BEER before all riders were in. I pulled in and in the short time it took me to put my bike away, he had unhooked the beer and was packing things up. My friend bought me a beer ticket which I was not able to use. Thankfully they did give her the money back but I was tad annoyed that they were so fast to pack up the BEST PART of the ride!

JimmyNH

Yeah TH, it's not just the Conejo. There is no more Ride around the Bear and as far as I know, the Tour of Poway is dead too. The rides that still exist, don't get even half of the participants they used to get just 5-6 years ago. And compared to the hey-days of cycling back in 2005-2008, today's rides look like a small bunch of drinking buddies who got together for a ride.
A couple of years ago I posted a poll about this.

https://www.bikeforums.net/southern-...ing-socal.html

From the 31 guys that responded, 21 said "cycling is alive and well", but it looks like the 4 pessimists
will end up being right. I personally, don't see much of a reason for the decline. Maybe I'll start a thread
about this. Or you can start it? Let's see what people think.

TrojanHorse

I was apparently one of the optimists. Whoops. Maybe everybody is a "why pay to ride the roads I ride all the time" style curmugeon now, who knows.

I don't get it either. Well, I'm doing TDPS in a week and they USED to get 11k riders until they moved the ride to January. It'll be "interesting" to see what they get this year.

nesdog

In all fairness, it takes a ton of volunteers to put on an event. Conejo Valley Cyclists has a decent membership but even with that pool of bodies, just a smallish percentage really gets involved. And the planning takes a year of effort.

It also seems like there were a ton of rides popping up so that made it harder to attract people. Add in the increasing prices and it's not a surprise that attendance has dropped.

Beachgrad05

One event that has the routing set up well to minimize number of volunteers needed is Cool Breeze in Ventura. They use pit stops twice without it being an out and back route. Pit stop 1 is also the last pit stop where you get popsicles. Pit stop 2 also pit stop 4 after lunch stop. That means 3 pits tops for century ride vs 5. Curious how the fires may affect ride this year

Juan Foote

It's not just your area, I can tell you. Many of the good centuries in this area just 'went away'. I know a couple of them did so because the lady that organized those rides decided to call it quits after a fairly personal bad experience a couple of years ago.

In relation to the "drinking buddies" part. Yup. I used to frequent a monthly social ride up in Atlanta that was superb and well supported with good turnout. This was while the founder, who was in school near where the ride was founded was coming back to participate and some of the original ride leaders were coming out. When the second generation of ride leaders became 'solid' turnout started to lag...unless there was beer advertised as part of the event happening, like to say we are going to do such and such ride with ending point at (insert name) microbrewery. The ride slowly went from dedicated friendly cyclists to liberal minded college age kids who were highly opinionated, and particularly politically opinionated...or a bunch of lushes riding for the beer.

thomson

Cruisin' and similar rides are an incredible effort to do. Expenses have gone up, for permits, insurance etc. Since this is a charity ride, all help is by volunteer and takes months of advanced prep.

There are still rides that are not charity rides so the organizer has some motivation to keep them going as they get paid.

I am done volunteering for these rides due to an incident I had with Cool Breeze several years ago. I was on the dirt bent over sticking in a sign and a guy that came flying by was startled by my presence (off the road mind you). he lost control of the bike and went down. He had a few scrapes but was otherwise OK. Despite him cussing me out, I asked him if he wanted me to summon a ride for him. He decided instead to threaten to sue me (I am not sure for what) and ride on to the end. There he complained to as many people as he could. I talked to the ride organizer when it was done and told him what happened. Surprisingly, the @@$%@* told the ride organizer the same story I did. The ride organizer was able to calm him down.

But, for me, that was it. I don't need to spend my time helping a ride just to go through things like this with rather unfriendly rider. I spend my time helping in other areas now, no more volunteering at bike rides for me.

So, the rides have become expensive to run. A LOT of effort by the organizers and somewhat less but all-day help from volunteers that sometimes is unappreciated. I am not surprised rides are being canceled.

TrojanHorse

Your rider friend sounds like he's pals with the guy that rammed me from behind at TDPS last weekend and then started cussing ME out.

JimmyNH

You said you did it. How was it? Did they get the 11K riders this year?

TrojanHorse

It felt pretty well populated. The organizers said 7k plus whomever showed up Saturday am. It was a gorgeous day, not as hot as predicted.

Nachoman

I don't know why these events are dying. They can be very profitable. Just to throw out some very round numbers, if you get 10,000 participants at $100.00 per person and donate 5% of it back to charity, spend 5% on insurance and 10% to the city or county for a permit, that would still leave you a profit of $80,000.00.

TrojanHorse

10,000 is an unusually high number, even the tour de palm springs didn't get that high this year. Again. You would think even 3-4,000 riders would be enough to make the numbers work though. I wonder how many participants Cruisin' was getting towards the end? I don't think it was a large number just based on my personal observations.

JimmyNH

10,000 * $100 = 1 cool million - 20% expenses = $800,000.

nesdog

I think the most I ever heard attending Cruising was about 1100 one year. It was well under that number later on. I had the feeling it cracked about 600 one time I rode it.

But again, so much depends upon a volunteer force. These are often charity rides so no money goes to the club. It's a tough show to put on.

Lesper4

Ride around the Bear was replaced with Breathless Agony as the previous owner was done running it and OCW I guess only wanted to run one event up there. But Tour de Big bear seems to be taking off with partnership with the Mammoth Gran Fondo.