While we were preparing for Cranksgiving this year, we were excited to continue the now five-year-long tradition of bringing the bike community together to have fun, ride bikes, and benefit our greater Baltimore community through donating food to local organizations.
But Cranksgiving this year was so much more than we had imagined!
213 people rode.
61 teams participated.
5 teams had at least one youth rider.
7 teams participated in our WTF (womens/trans/femme/non-binary) category.
27 volunteers shared their time to make Cranksgiving a reality.
26 business supported us through cash sponsorships and donations.
10 people without a bike borrowed one from Rec and Parks.
At the end of the day, we packed up our van with over 1200 food items and over 1300 pounds of food to donate!
While we’ve always held fast to our rule of giving out scores based on purchasing each item on the list, rather than the total quantity of items, many people earned good karma points by bringing back multiples of each item. A volunteer scored one team that had five of each item!
We started Cranksgiving as a way to bring together the biking community to give back, but it’s become much more. Riders who have never gone grocery shopping on their bike before tried it for the first time. People who came to the ride solo found teams and new friends to ride with. We’ve strengthened our relationship with Moveable Feast and the Franciscan Center, helping us to deepen the conversation around the intersection of transportation and the meaningful community work they do.
As Bikemore continues to grow, our programs grow, and the community we bring together through Cranksgiving grows.
We are grateful for the businesses, organizations, and people that contributed to making Cranksgiving a success through donating money, space, food, and prizes. Our volunteers took complete charge of running the logistics of Cranksgiving, from registering the 85 people on-site to stamping manifests to counting up food and scores.
Thank you to all who participated in Cranksgiving this year, and we hope to see you riding with us next year!
Check out the full photo album here.
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