On September 18th I volunteered to bike over and hand out information about the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition at the start of the Minneapolis Bike Tour. While handing out that information, I noted the biker participants were in a somewhat sour mood that I attributed to the weather which was around 50 with a light rain. I guess the people were thinking: “I paid $35 to ride in this!” I imagine many bikers never made it over and I have heard, but have no first-hand information, that the Minneapolis Bike Tour rider participant numbers were significantly down this year.
On my bike ride home, I thought, how did we get to the position of having two major closed loop city bicycle tours on back-to-back weekends?
As I understand it, the St. Paul Classic Bike Tour had been offered for a number of years during the month of September. Then about 5 years ago, Minneapolis came along and decided to offer a tour in September as well. I for one would like to see one of the tours offered in May so we can have city tours bookending the summer riding season. It would certainly help on the old family budget not to have two registration expenses in one month and separate May and September tours would allow each city to maximize its recruiting efforts across the river. I say that since St. Paul had the September date first, the Minneapolis Bike Tour should move to May.
What do you think and does anyone know why/how Minneapolis came to choose the week after the St. Paul Classic Bike Tour to put on its event?
