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It’s time to grease your wheels and pull out your calendars for the first annual Moscow Bicycle Prize Ride on April 26.
Whether you bring your mountain bike or your unicycle, this race is open to all ages and all types of bikes.
According to event organizer Hugo Lecomte, a University of Idaho graduate student in sports and recreation management, all you need is your bike and the $10 registration fee.
“We expect to see all kinds of different bikes,” Lecomte said. “If they want to come with a unicycle, they can come with a unicycle. They can come with cruisers, road bikes, mountain bikes and brand new carbon bikes. Whatever it takes.”
The race is also free to anyone who brings along a bike rental receipt from Paradise Creek Bicycles.
The non-profit, recreational bike ride will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. Competitors will meet in front of the 1912 Center on 412 E. Third St. Competitors must be back in front of the 1912 Center no later than 11 a.m. if they want their chance to receive prizes.
The race mocks that of a poker ride and competitors will stop at five different locations – Tri-State, Moscow Bagel and Deli, Bucer’s Coffeehouse Pub, Moscow Food Co-op and the North Idaho Athletic Club – to pick up a playing card. Participants must also stop at Paradise Creek Bicycles, even though they will not pick up a card at that location.
“There is no special route either, people can go in the order they want,” Lecomte said. “We really emphasize free riding, basically, and free riding is like people … (having) a grocery shopping list that involves stopping by the locations.”
There will be four age groups – men, women, boys and girls – but there is no age limit for the race.
“It’s not just going to be 18 to 25-year-old students. There is no age limit,” Lecomte said. “We expect to hopefully have people from seven to 77 years old all having fun at the same time on their bikes.”
The finisher with the best hand of poker gets the first prize, one of eight prize bikes. The remaining seven bikes, as well as a wide variety of other prizes, will go to the next highest hands. Other prizes include MP3 players, Cliff Bars, coupons for bagels from Moscow Bagel and Deli and free meal coupons for the Moscow Food Co-op.
Lecomte said competitors don’t have to stop at every location, but if they skip one, they slim their chances of a good hand, therefore slimming their chances of winning the bigger prizes.
There will also be booths set up at the 1912 Center hosted by Safe Route 2 School and the Moscow Area Mountain Bike Association. Free bike helmets will be given away and there will be music for the competitors to enjoy. Tune-ups will also be available free of charge to the public.
Lecomte has been doing rides similar to the Prize Ride for the past three years in Coeur d’Alene and thought that bringing a recreational ride to Moscow would be a great
success.
“I talked to a lot of people on bikes, and people have been looking for this – they have been looking for a bike ride that is not competitive,” Lecomte said. “We are hopefully going to have those people, like a dad with three kids that will be like ducks – the little ones following behind him.”
All the proceeds from the event will go to the Latah Trail Foundation to help finish the trail that runs from Moscow to Troy.
“There is no other event like this that is inclusive,” Lecomte said. “This includes a lot of people and it is a non-profit – it is a very good cause and it benefits the community, and it benefits the participants because they are going to realize that it is safe to bike in the city. It benefits the business owners because the bikers are going to be stopping in their shops and it will benefit the Latah trail. So in the end, it benefits everybody.”
For more information about this event, contact Hugo Lecomte at 651-1212.
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