April 12 deadline: vote Midwest in the Bell Built mountain bike trail building grants competition

Last fall, Bell Helmets and IMBA announced the Bell Built Trail Building Grants and the 12 finalists were named earlier this year.

Bell Helmets is providing $100,000 to fund three, mountain bike trail projects, one each in the categories of bike park/pump track, flow trail and downhill/gravity trail. Out of the 12 selected as finalists, the public will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite project in each category on Bell’s Facebook page, beginning March 5.

Bell BuiltThree Midwest parks are finalists in three separate categories:

Pump tracks/bike parks

  • Elm Creek Bike Park: Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists, Maple Grove, MN

Flow trails

  • Hobbs Hollow Flow Trail: Hoosier Mountain Biking Association, Brown County, IN

Downhill trails

  • Overflow Trail: Copper Harbor Trails Club, Copper Harbor, MI

The big push here in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions has been to vote for all three Midwest parks (you can only vote once in each category). The deadline is this Friday, April 12.

Copper Harbor Trails Club at Wheel & Sprocket's Bike Expo Sale Copper Harbor Trails Club at Wheel & Sprocket's Bike Expo Sale Copper Harbor Trails Club at Wheel & Sprocket's Bike Expo Sale
Last weekend, Aaron Rogers and Lori Hauswirth from the Copper Harbor Trails Club had a booth at Wheel & Sprocket’s Bike Expo Sale in Milwaukee where they cajoled passersby into logging into their Facebook accounts to vote. Very cool.

I’ve been doing a little work behind the scenes on this because A) Elm Creek is in the Twin Cities, about an hour away my hometown of Northfield; B) I’m a member of MORC; C) my riding ability has improved immensely because of the Eagan pump track so having more bike parks around is great for the sport; and D) I expect to be making frequent trips to Copper Harbor to take advantage of their downhill trails.

Because the Bell Built Facebook voting process can be a little cumbersome, I created this 3-minute how-to video/screencast:

httpv://youtu.be/j5S-1y8g3z8

So don’t delay. Vote now for:

  • Elm Creek Bike Park/Maple Grove, MN in the Pump Track Category
  • Overflow Trail/Copper Harbor, MI in the Downhill Category
  • Hobbs Hollow/Brown County, IN in the Flow Trail category

We Midwest / Great Lakes mountain bikers would appreciate it.

And now that I’ve blogged about this, I’m going to nag, harass, and bother my non-mountain bike Facebook friends into voting. My message:

As you probably know, I’ve fallen in love with mountain biking the past two years. (You can read more than you’ll ever want to know on my blog, Mountain Bike Geezer.)

Right now, three Midwest mountain bike trails have a great opportunity to win a large grant from the Bell Helmet company. Most area mountain bikers on Facebook have already voted but because you can only vote once, it is critical to get our non-mountain biking Facebook friends to vote. Which is why I’m harassing you!

Step 1 (optional): See my short YouTube video on how to vote.

Step 2: Go to the Bell Built Facebook page and vote for:

* Elm Creek Bike Park/Maple Grove, MN in the Pump Track Category

* Overflow Trail/Copper Harbor, MI in the Downhill Category

* Hobbs Hollow/Brown County, IN in the Flow Trail category

If you vote, come on back here and ‘like’ this post and I’ll find a way to thank you.

One Comment

  1. Griff Wigley said:

    I posted this to the MORC forum and to several pages on Facebook this morning:

    Why come to the Bell Built Grant get-out-the-vote party tonight in Anoka if you’ve already voted?
    https://www.facebook.com/events/112590412243214/

    The basic idea of the party tonight is to replicate what get-out-the-vote organizers do when D-Day approaches and the hard/tedious work of stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, sending emails has to be done.

    1) They get the volunteers together in one room and make it a fun and social event.

    2) They urge the volunteers to make one-to-one contact with potential voters.

    Many of you reading this have probably already voted.

    And many of you have probably already spammed your Facebook friends with one message to all of them or maybe with a post on your own FB wall.

    But probably few of us have sent individual private messages to our FB friends with a note like “Hey Bob, hope all’s well with you and your fam damily up there in frozen tundra of northern Wisconsin. Can you do me a favor and head over to the Bell Built…”

    And that’s boring and hard to do, but it’s a little less so at a get-out-the-vote party.

    Hope to see y’all tonight. And bring your laptop if you can.

    Event details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/112590412243214/

    April 12, 2013

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