Human Power Challenge "E"vent

The Human Power Challenge is held annually in Portland Oregon on Memorial Day weekend, this year those dates are May 23rd and 24th. This is our 16th annual Human Power Challenge and this year we are trying something new!

In addition to our standard races that we have for our recumbent bicycles and tricycles, we thought we would create a new event focused upon the electric assist bicycle and their important role in the commuter segment of transportation. The purpose being a means of showing off a viable and healthy alternative commuting device while also providing a fun, social event for the eBike commuters to get together and celebrate their rides!

A course will be set up to approximate a day in the life of the ebike commuter. There is no race, no timing, no laps counted. This is all about having ebikers ride around to different destination points to visit vendors and or other commercial businesses just as they would on a typical ebike commuting day, except that it will all be done on a track. We are inviting commercial businesses such as a healthy food chain store to set up a small booth or "storefront" and hand out goodies or coupons for the attendees, as well as other vendors including coffee vendors, ebike and regular bicycle stores, and of course a beer stop!

For more information regarding the entire HPC offering and registration, go to http://www.ohpv.org/hpc/index.html .

The electric assist event in the Human Power Challenge has been cancelled. Due to late responses from the previous insurers informing us of a more than double of the fees involved in having the event, we were forced to delete the event. We tried.

Herrsprocket said:

The electric assist event in the Human Power Challenge has been cancelled. Due to late responses from the previous insurers informing us of a more than double of the fees involved in having the event, we were forced to delete the event. We tried.

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Thanks for trying and posting!

really is a shame that the city does not sponsor it as one of their school field day programs so it could be sheltered under the city's liability umbrella.

they waste so much money on their own pet boondoggles and the one thing, bicycling, that portland sponsors in it's public image is neglected in favor of building skate parks for children to waste their time in rather than doing their homework like all the other countries of the world that are eating our lunch in technology.

how many korean and japanese kids waste all day on a skateboard? it is kinda like the obesity epidemic. give in to lack of discipline and mental laziness since we are richer than everyone else in the world and have the biggest army ever so we can take whatever we want even though we do not work for it or deserve it.

How much is insurance for an event like this? Is it a reasonable amount that can be met by sponsors? Probably not enough time for this year, but next?

and i think that the city owns the speedway that they use for ebike races so it should have not been a problem from the beginning to force such a non risk event to have liability for riding a bike on a closed course.

Wow, unbelievable! Well maybe not. #$%^& insurance companies.

Yeah, insurance companies. They play a lot of games at the expense of the public.

The city does own the speedway dnmun. They don't, unfortunately control the insurance for the track, another party does. And they are somewhat not too keenly interested in our "little" event. And the risk of injury would have been indeed minute.

As you may recall, when we first tried to formulate a format for the race, we tried several aspects of "racing", as a means for demonstration to the public about the viability of ebikes as a true means of transportation. It just never really took hold as there was not enough of a demographic of attendees to mature and grow the race. So, the committee asked me to try again for an electric assist format, and I knew that the format needed to change to entice more attendees to the track. So I came up with a non race format, hoping to capture the "believers" that already got it. It was turned into a "day in the life of the ebike commuter", meaning, starting out at a "home base" then traversing to "store fronts" that one may typically encompass during a days commute. Stopping at a healthy food store, then a coffee stop, then a visit to an ebike store or a recumbent business, etc. Each of these stops were to be made at actual business facsimiles of a real business that were sponsors of the event, and in which the sponsors would have an opportunity to represent their business and also hand out coupons for product reductions, or just some small item giveaways. No cost to the store front peeps to be there, as we want to make this as cost conscience as possible. The incentive for the attendees (riders) was to hand out more financial goodies to them than what it took just to sign up for the event. And, meet new commuters, meet the Store Front businesses, and have a great time! So no racing, no timing, no lap counting, just promotion of the ebike as a true alternative to everyday transportation.

The insurance is hundreds of bucks for the premium and then there is the individual fees. We tried to lean in and take one for the team to help promote the ebike community, but as I say, the premium more than doubled this year. And we had help too in the way of sponsorship from a few ebike believers back a few years ago when we first tried an electric assist event. But the amount now is more significant and we had no way of planning for this increase. BY the way, the financial help came from Josh Kerson and another fellow (can't recall his name, our correspondence was on the yahoo assist group and their site is so corrupted, I lost most of my mail). I wish I could remember his name, he also stepped up big for us, like Josh. Dang it! It would take sponsorship to hold this event, as we could in no way recover the costs of the insurance from just the participants.

Perhaps next year. We are keeping a finger on this pulse.

Tom