Tour de Donut

It's finished.

I've been dreading July 11th for a year now-- ever since July 12th of last year. Why, you ask?

Tour de Donut.

A couple of years ago when Layne was president of the Rotary club, we were looking for a better way to raise money for service projects than a fireworks stand. We read a funny story in Bicycling magazine about a race back east called the Tour de Donut-- and we decided that was something we could try.

Just like that, we gave birth to Hell-Day (for us) and a really fun time for a lot of other people.

The first year went so well, that somehow Layne and I suddenly found ourselves major event organizers.

Here I am starting the race.

We've spent the last month or so designing and ordering tshirts, designing, programming, and updating a website, planning a course, talking to the police, ordering donuts, creating registration databases, finding and organizing volunteers, and a host of other tasks. It takes an incredible amount of work to organize a bike race for 300 people!

The gist of the thing is this. The course is 7 miles. You ride it once, then eat as many donuts as you can choke down. (You get 3 minutes off your race time for every donut you eat.) Ride the loop again, eat more donuts, then ride one more loop for a total of 21 miles.

The winner ate 28 donuts and ended up with -13 minutes. There were over 1300 donuts consumed-- 6 of them by Doug. Some people squished the donuts up and poured water over them to make them slide down easier. It was disgusting.
At least no one puked this year-- at least not where I could see them. We definitely got an interesting mix of people-- serious racers, families, and--well-- whatever this guy is.

Amazingly, it went really well. There are always things that can improve, but it was smoother than last year and everyone seemed to have a good time. We raised $7400 for some really good causes (Kona BikeTown as well as local rotary projects).

Here's the thing though-- when everyone assumes that Layne and I are going to do it next year, I'm going to practice that word I learned a couple of months ago. You know, the one that starts with "N" and ends with "O".

Depending on my mood, I might even add a "HELL" to the first of it. I'd be happy to help-- get the shirts or something, but I'm not being in charge again. It's someone else's turn to be in charge of stuff.

It really screwed up my riding schedule.

You know we can't have that.