After 35 years, Cycle Oregon will no longer be offering its 7-day bike ride. Facing a number of challenges, the organization has decided that this year will be the final year. Steve Schulz is the executive director of Cycle Oregon. He joins us to share more on what led to this decision and plans for the future.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. 35 years ago, an institution was born. Cycle Oregon began weeklong biking trips all across the state, drawing thousands of Oregonians and people from around the country. The organization weathered wildfires and came back last year after a COVID pause. But it announced recently that this year’s 7-day Classic will be the final edition of a beloved tradition. Steve Schulz is the executive director of Cycle Oregon. He joins us to talk about the end of an era and the nonprofit’s plans going forward. Steve Schulz, welcome.
Steve Schulz: Dave, thanks, great to be here.
Miller: Before we get to why Cycle Oregon’s Classic Ride is ending after this year, what can you tell us about how the ride got started?
Schulz: Sure. The ride has been around since 1988. The organization’s been around and an innkeeper from Ashland, Jim Beaver, had written a letter to Jonathan Nicholas, who was a columnist at the Oregonian at the time, about wouldn’t it be great if you all did a bike ride and you could come and showcase a lot of the rural communities and help provide some sort of economic benefit and it just kind of spurred from there. And in 1988, decided to do that first event and they figured a few hundred people would show up, and 1000 people showed up and it kind of just steamrolled from that point.
After a number of years of making some money, they were like, ‘OK, well, we should do something with the funds that we’re making,’ and literally passed around a hat to take collections and we ended up starting up the Cycle Oregon Fund in 1996. But it was just sort of an idea that was hatched from a local business, a rural business that said, hey, here’s how we could use some help. And a few folks decided to take that charge and we’ve been able to do it for 35 years.
Miller: Why do you think it struck a chord?
Schulz: I think it struck a chord because I think there’s the interesting piece of bridging that rural-urban divide which we often hear and we’re often working on. But I think it was like, hey, we can go and explore some really great places that we’ve heard of and somebody will help do it for us. We’d be like, ‘Cycle Oregon, you just show up and pedal and we’ll take care of the rest,’ and there’s something to be said about that. I think the experiences that people have had at our events since 1988 have really built that community, that’s brought them back year after year. And every year on our events, people come up to me and say, ‘This is just like a big family reunion. I would go places I would never go by myself without you.’ I’ve seen that, I’ve lived in the state my entire life and I’ve never seen this area that we’re going to this year.
So I think we’re able to provide a lot to both the communities and our community and our ridership that just keeps people coming back.
Miller: What can you tell us about your first Cycle Oregon ride?
Schulz: My first Cycle Oregon ride was out to the Steens. The Steens had just been opened up for public access in Harney County, so deep southeast of Oregon. And it was September of 2001. And so as we all know, the Twin Towers fell in September of 2001 and we were out in Harney County, where cows outnumber the people. And it was just a very surreal experience to be disconnected from the world at that point. And I think that’s one of the pieces that really gleaned me to the organization, was that community that felt out there, isolated, was one thing. And I grew up in rural Northwestern Wyoming and, being in a rural community like that, in that time, really just sort of hooked me and I’ve never left the organization.
Miller: We asked listeners for their favorite memories of Cycle Oregon. Nathan White wrote, “This will be my 10th year volunteering. The year they had to reroute from Halfway due to fire, ended up being my favorite. The resulting day near Baker City, made up entirely on the fly, was one of the most beautiful and fun rides, even if I was experiencing it from a SAG van.”
And Adam Hill wrote, “I was in the very first Cycle Oregon when I was just 14. When I signed up, I was the youngest rider. The other riders and amazing volunteers I met made this experience unforgettable. Also, of course, the fun insanity as they were constantly problem solving along the way, especially in Eugene, due to unforeseen occurrences. However, without a doubt, my favorite memory is just getting to ride it with my brother.”
We also got some voicemails. Let’s listen to one that we got from D.W. in Southwest Portland.
D.W [voicemail]: “My favorite memory of Cycle Oregon occurred during the 25th anniversary ride, which is also the only time I ever did it. I rode the climb to Crater Lake with my stunt brother, Michael, where we then tackled the rim together. It was my first time seeing Crater Lake and it was an incredible way to experience that view. It’s what I still call ‘the most epic ride I’ll never do again’. Right around 90 miles, none of it flat. I think I’m still sore from it 11 years later.”
Miller: Steve Schulz, what do you think this event meant for the communities that rode through it?
Schulz: Oh, I think that’s one of the kind of those behind the curtain things that we get to see, when the riderships are there. They see the communities and there’s that commonality that’s discovered as you’re talking with somebody from a rural community. You realize you’re not different, even though it may be perceived that you’re different, from different places. But I think a lot of times we come into communities and it’s the “Hatfields and the McCoys” that are there. And they end up working together to host us and end up bridging those differences between themselves, that ultimately creates a stronger community.
And we get the stories that come back from those communities, the impacts on the local businesses. How many times I’ve heard, ‘We did as much sales in one day that we do all year when you guys come to town.’ I mean, the times that I’ve heard that I can’t count. And I think the identity of looking at new opportunities for economic development, from a tourism standpoint, a lot of these rural communities that we go to were founded in timber or fishing, sort of natural resource economies that aren’t producing as much, for a number of different reasons which we don’t need to go into. But I think seeing that, hey, bikes can mean business and this is something, these people are great. I think when they ask us to come back every year, like, ‘Please come back, we love having you,’ that just tells us that we’re serving the community as we intended to.
Miller: At its peak, how many people were taking part in the week-long trip?
Schulz: The most we ever took was about 2,500 people. And that was in the 25th anniversary which was mentioned earlier, is one of my big memories in 2012. At that point, “the circus,” as we call it, we bring it to town, [and] it is so big that we didn’t want to get bigger than that. But usually we try to take around 2000 people, is historically what we were doing, pretty much back in the 2010′s, that whole era.
Miller: Can you describe “the circus?” Logistically, what did it take to support that many riders going to places where I think with some frequency, there were many more riders than there were local residents?
Schulz: Oh, yeah, frequently, I mean, we outnumber the residents in a majority of the places that we visit. I’ve been approached by a number of people on events that have history in the armed forces, military execution stuff and they have just been blown away by the logistics that are pulled off, kind of behind the curtain.
When we come into a town, from a footprint size we’re 15 acres of land that’s needed. We’re talking about shower trucks and stages and kitchens and big tents and mobile centers for calms, and all kinds of things. We’ve got a tent service where we set up 600 tents. You’ve got another 600 tents of size taking up places. And getting food delivered in the middle of nowhere, or having fuel in the middle of nowhere is really challenging. But it’s really, for me it’s part of what’s fun about the organization, is just building those logistics and being able to deliver a product that serves these communities and serves our ridership.
Miller: Let’s listen to another voicemail. This is Kevin, from Lake Oswego.
Kevin [voicemail]: “Five years ago, when I was 59, I had my knee replaced in May. And to celebrate, I did Cycle Oregon in September. My daughter was just out of high school so she was able to go with us for the whole week, the two of us, and we circled the Wallowas, starting in Baker and ending in Baker City. And we had just a lovely week together. I celebrated my new knee, I was able to ride a bike all week long with my lovely daughter. She is graduating from college next week and I’m very sad the week event is no longer.”
Miller: So let’s turn to that. There are a number of reasons why this classic weeklong ride is ending, but let’s talk about logistics first. What’s it been like to try to provide all the services that you were mentioning before? I mean, the lodging, the food, the porta potties. What’s it been like to provide that last year, and to set it up for this year?
Schulz: It’s been really difficult. I think as Alex mentioned, employment and costs and service costs and those types of things, have escalated. When we came out of COVID, we were fortunate enough to be able to be here after COVID for a number of reasons. But a lot of the businesses that we’ve worked with and service providers that we worked with weren’t around any longer. And coming out of COVID, having to sort of rebuild our infrastructure and our team of service providers and partners to launch these events; Classics is one of the events, but we also do multiple other events. So it was a kind of a constant challenge to rebuild and find new vendors and try to teach them 30 plus years of history, of like, ‘This is how we build this thing.’
It just became really challenging and as we came into this year, those challenges are still there. Capacity level is down from communities. We use a lot of community help when we go to communities, from through community volunteer groups. Through COVID, a lot of those volunteer groups dried up, they weren’t able to do fundraising, they weren’t able to rally around a cause because of COVID and so subsequently aren’t around any longer. So those pieces, Alex mentioned fire, obviously, we have had fire, you had the call about the 2015 turnaround due to fire, and 2017 was our first cancellation ever, based on fire. All those considerations, we have to take into account.
Seven days is a big thing, if you do events at all, you’re basically doing seven different events back to back and you move each event, each day. Logistically, it’s really challenging. We were built around this model that we’ve been working on back in 1988 and that model has changed, but part of that model was to be sustainable and to be impactful. And so it’s one thing if you can do one or the other, but if it’s not sustainable the way we do it and we’re not impactful, as I mentioned earlier it was about generating funds to give back. I always tell people we throw these parties on bikes and then whatever beer is left over, we give it back to people. Well, with all the challenges and the rising costs, we’re not able to provide that impact like we did, we’re not able to give that money back or invest that money in the fund like we used to. And so if we’re not serving that need, then we need to evolve and change so we can get back to serving that need.
Miller: How much did rider interest evolve over that same period of time? I mean, you mentioned that you put on shorter rides. There’s [been] a gravel ride in recent years. Is there as much interest among Oregonians or other people to actually do a 7-day Classic ride?
Schulz: Yeah, great question, Dave. I think that the road cycling multi-day tour interest has been declining since the late 2010′s, I would say. And you can look nationally to different organizations and particularly with COVID and other challenges, there’s just been a challenge to get out there. You look at 35 years ago, Cycle Oregon was one of like three organizations that did a multi-day bike ride in the nation. And now you look, there’s just about every state that does some sort of form of bike ride. Different modes of cycling have shown up that people are embracing, they’re likely to get off of the pavement onto gravel, back into mountain biking, a mixture of the two. You’ve got e-bikes, you have a lot of different variabilities that weren’t there before.
What we’ve seen is the decline in numbers of people that are willing to or having the time to commit to training for a seven-day event. The Classic event is based on something that’s not, you just pick up and decide, hey, I’m gonna go ride this. I mean, a lot of people that ride bikes on a regular basis could pick up a weekend event and say, ‘Hey, I can go ride this event,’ and our weekend events have multiple routes, so there’s some options for people. But think, well, I can knock out a 30 mile ride, Saturday and Sunday. I’ve done some training, I’ve done whatever. I can catch up. If you talk about a 7-day event, that’s months of training for lots of people. And so you look at the reality of what’s out there in the world. It’s like, well, that’s harder and harder to get to. So how do we provide something to people that they can still embrace what we do and what they want to do on the bike.
That 7-day model is something that is challenging for a lot of people. And we’ve also historically, that event has sat in September after school has gotten back into session, so we’ve had teachers or the primary caregivers at home haven’t been able to join us. So there’s added challenges, where we’d like to embrace that and be a little bit more accessible to lots of communities.
Miller: Let’s listen to one more voice mail. This is Austin calling in from Portland.
Austin [voicemail]: “My dad and my grandpa on my mom’s side did Cycle Oregon, early 2000′s. There was this period of time leading up to Cycle Oregon where he was out riding and at that time I would go out and ride short rides with him. I also watched the connection between him and my grandpa. It was really wonderful to see the connections that they made over this event and leading up to the event and talking about bike rides and riding and then actually going on this week-long ride. It’s something that I think about a lot because my grandpa’s still with us, but his memory is quickly not sticking around. And so thinking back to that time, it’s great.”
Miller: You know, he and some of our other callers and folks on Facebook, they talked about family connections in this in a very moving way. But you also talked at the beginning about intrastate connections, about bridging the urban-rural divide. I can’t help but think about something like the Greater Idaho movement right now, in the context of this. I’m just curious what it means to you to have to stop or to make the decision to stop this particular cycling connection between different parts of Oregon at a time when, arguably, the divisions between different parts of Oregon have never been greater.
Schulz: Yeah. Well, I think to be clear Dave, because the Classic is sunsetting does not mean we’re not continuing to do this work in rural Oregon. It may not be a 7-day event but we will certainly be in rural Oregon. We love to ride there, we love to support there. Our mission is based on that, about providing that service. I agree that that divide is something that we need to continue to help and it isn’t until people get face to face with communities and with each other that you understand that you are common and that there are commonalities between them. So we will continue to serve that.
I mean, you look at successful brands, they evolve to meet the needs of who they serve, right? Which is what we’ve been doing and continue to do. And this is one more face of this. I mean, think about if Apple decided that since they were founded on the personal computer, that’s all they would do for the next 50 years, right? Look what they’ve accomplished and who they serve by evolving.
Cycle Oregon is evolving. We’re gonna continue to do that work out in the state. We’re gonna continue to give back, we’re gonna continue to get youth on bikes and provide opportunities for rural communities to thrive. It’s just gonna be in a different format than that 7-day Classic.
Miller: Steve Schulz, thanks very much.
Schulz: Thanks very much for having me, Dave.
Miller: Steve Schulz is the executive director of Cycle Oregon. One more comment from one of our listeners. Diane Kress Hower is talking here about Harney County. She says her favorite memory from Cycle Oregon is “eating lunch in the Drewsey Cafe, watching them prepare for Cycle Oregon coming through. What wonderful teamwork and community.”
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