Last year’s inaugural Tour de Newton is coming back again on June 15 (Father’s Day). The 13 village, 20 mile fun ride was immensely popular with riders last year so this year we’ve bumped up the number of participants to 500 for the 2nd annual Tour.
The Tour de Newton isn’t a race, it isn’t a competition, it’s a fun, relaxed, family-friendly ride for everyone. It works like this …. at 9:30 in the morning, in all 13 villages of Newton, groups of riders simultaneously set off on the 20 mile circuit, so you’ll be riding the loop with your village neighbors. Each group has a leader and a “sweep” who takes up the rear and you all travel as a group.
As you arrive in each village, village greeters welcome you and you stop for a few minutes. You pick up a village badge (above), refreshments and hear a little bit about the highlights of the village. Each village stop is different – some welcome you with noise and hoots and screams, some welcome you with delicious local refreshments, some welcome you with photos and displays, some with a mini-talk on the neighborhood history. In Thompsonville last year, I welcomed riders with a local tale of murder and mayhem.
It’s a great way to see the entire city at a relaxed pace and have lots of fun along the way. If 20 miles is too much for you then ride half the circuit if you like. If you complete the whole route you’ll collect a complete set of the 13 village badges. We’ve got a new cool badge design this year thanks to our top shelf graphic designer, Heidi Werner. *** Shameless Commercial Plug *** – If you have any commercial graphic design work and want the best, contact Heidi Werner, ([email protected]) she’s a graphic design star and a pleasure to work with.
You can sign up to ride the Tour de Newton via the on-line registration form. We recommend that you register early since we’re expecting the 500 slots to go fairly quickly.
If you’d rather not ride, then sign up as a Village Greeter. It’s the most fun and social volunteer gig you can imagine and we need volunteers in all 13 villages. If you’re interested, send me an email ([email protected]).
Between now and then all the leaders and sweeps are going on training runs to learn the 20 mile route and tricky bits in detail. Here’s a photo from Chris Steele at the end of a training run yesterday for about a dozen Tour de Newton leaders and sweeps, including Chris.
Also on the To-Do list is repainting all the route markers on the pavement. They’re all a bit faded now. Henry Finch and the painting crew might be spotted in coming weeks around the city with their spray cans and stencils.
One of the things I most like about this event is that there there’s roughly 75 volunteers involved, as well as help from the city, to make it happen. There’s a lots of moving parts and lots of people moving them all.
I’ve better get to work if I’m going to be done whittling in time for the Tour de Newton.
At least you now what to do with all the branches that had to be cleared to build the rail trail.