Hello Skaters,
Hope you are all enjoying a great summer. As we have for the past several years, it’s time to commit to our fundraising activity for the summer so we can earn funds to pay for Fall and Winter skating sessions at the rink.

Why do we need Fundraising?In the past, we volunteered at the Portland Marathon, which donates to nonprofit volunteer groups. After doing this for a few years, we felt that having a minimum of 10 people work for about 5-6 hours and earning only $300 (enough to pay for one hour of ice time) wasn’t worth our time. Then, we discovered the annual Providence Bridge Pedal.

What is the Bridge Pedal? And what does that have to do with Speedskating?If you’re not familiar with it, is a local cycling event involving quite an amazing amount of organization and coordination so that thousands of people can ride their bikes on Portland’s bridges on a Saturday morning in August. This year, it’s AUGUST 14th.

What we have done for the past two years is assemble crews to manage the following:

Closure & placing plywood on one lane of the Hawthorne Bridge
Coning (placing orange cones) along the route (Macadam or McLoughlin, whichever part of the route they need us to do).

When do we need you?As soon as possible, please send an email to either myself or Max (his email is fooddemon666@yahoo.com) and let us know you are available to volunteer.

The Hawthorne Bridge crews – we need 2 crews of at least six – one will work Saturday evening (usually 5pm – 10pm, depending on how efficient the city crews are at bringing the plywood).
The other crew of six (or more) will work after the ride is finished to help pick up the plywood off the bridge and load it onto forklifts.

The coning crews – we need w crews of 3 people each. Adults are best for this job.

These crews have a van filled with orange cones and need one person to drive while one other person hands cones to the person placing them along the route. After the ride, the cones are picked up, stacked in the van and returned to the designated supply location.

Please sign up as soon as you can. We hope you can participate as this activity is not only fun to be involved with, the organization is great and we earn much-needed funds for our club. Plus watching the smiling faces of everyone on their bikes just makes it all worthwhile!

Thank you!
-Linda