Last year I helped my friends Laura and Tom organize this cool event I had never heard of called Cranksgiving. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a scavenger hunt that happens in cities across the nation where groups of cyclists gather food items for a non-profit.

Here in Portland, our non-profit for the second year running is Outside In. Their organization works with homeless and at-risk youth. We think that it’s a fucking tragedy that kids go hungry in this country, so we are doing our part to ensure that some pretty cool kids can have an awesome Thanksgiving. Not to mention Dave’s Killer Bread upped their donation from last year and ensued some gluteny goodness all freaking year long for these kids.

I got an email a few weeks ago from Tom saying that he would love to having me back again with my donation barrel. I jumped on the opportunity and borrowed a barrel from work. The agency that I work for supports over 9000 men and women a year in many different capacities. We have a day center which participants can get showers, clothing, toiletries, haircuts, nursing services, TB tests and much more. We also have two short-term residential facilities for men and one for women where a person experiencing homelessness can stay for up to 4 months while working with a housing case manager, attending classes, workshops and work with someone like me; a life skills coordinator who helps them with employment, volunteer and education opportunities while they address their barriers to housing.

I kinda went rogue and while representing the agency, I wasn’t technically on company time or anything. But it’s about professionalism and all that shit. So, smiles and stats and best practices! And with that I was able to take away 2.5 bags of coats, hats and gloves which some folks are going to be stoked to have this winter! So thanks everyone!

So I found myself at Cranksgiving with over 100 riders (making up 31 teams)! It was pretty awesome to say the least. I got to hand out flyers about our women’s shelter and network with a lot of really cool cats regarding donation opportunities.

2pm hits and the race is ready to go. The weather had been raining off and on throughout the day, and from what I heard in the warmth of Velocult was that the riders got caught in some torrential downpour. I drank two pots of hot herbal tea.

It was difficult to move in the venue with everyone crammed in there all costumed up, many having brought their bikes in with them. I’m really glad the fire marshal didn’t show up. It was kind of spectacular. Though, I wasn’t involved with the registration process, it seemed as if it went pretty smoothly from where I was stationed with my barrel. Because I had some notion of what was going on, I was able to direct those that needed assistance to where they needed to go, so that was cool. . . and probably helpful.

While we unfortunately didn’t get anyone join us this year, there were five different “Today Show” teams that joined 5 of the 70+ rides happening across the US and they did a segment on the history and what it’s all about. So that was freaking cool. You can view it here.

 Here is the full report from Puddlecycle laying out all the epic details and stats. What I do have to say is that the riders brought back almost $1900 in food and supplies. That’s about $400 more than last year! (basic math for the win!)

It all happened so fast, I couldn’t get a non-blurry photo of “Team Wish Upon a Bone”

The first team back made it in less than 1 hour. Seriously, it was like 50 minutes. These dudes were flying. I have no idea how they made it about 12 miles in that amount of time. I’m winded even lifting my bike off the storage hook. And it was rainy, remember. I ride slow in the rain. I tucker down and grit my teeth. But they just sucked it up and flew.

Quickly behind them was Team “Muscles with Brussels.” They were scrambling in the backdoor within minutes. Many members of this team were on the old cyclocross racing team, Team Slow – but they were showing their swiftness with that kind of finish.

There was so much selflessness that happened today. While the entry fee was $10 a person, which went directly to the purchase of food, teams went above and beyond. Bikes for Humanity PDX even donated 9 bikes and 9 mechanic courses valued at $1800 total. Rock on!

So many amazing people made this event happen. I’m not going to attempt to name all of them, but this is about half of them. There you go!

I hope everyone had an absolutely amazing Cranksgiving and that they have a fabulous Thanksgiving. If you need help thinking of things to donate to your local homeless shelter, you can check out my guide.