Cryodrome as a weekly winter community ride has officially concluded. And this time indefinitely. I wanted to take a moment to look back at the last 3 years of Cryodrome.
When I started Cryodrome, Columbus had several popular rides, one of which I was a regular: Dear People of Columbus (Dear PoC). Dear PoC was started by a local potter to bike to immigrant and PoC owned restaurants. This was a mission close to the founder's heart being an immigrant themself. The other ride at that time was ABoB (All Butts on Bikes). Both rides met around the same time on Wednesday. Neither of these rides ran during the winter, but if they ever decided to, I wanted to make sure my ride wouldn’t step on any toes. I scheduled it for the heat of the day (or what we could get) on Saturdays, same meeting place as Dear PoC.
In college I had a job as an event organizer for different campus charities. I was not suited for such a job. I had a group of students that met occasionally as a think tank for brainstorming event ideas, but very few of them were able to join me in set up and tear down. I am an easily flustered person, and I was frequently stressed with this job. Some of my events were successful, some were not. I think it’s important to try and to fail and to apply yourself to things that are outside your skillset. You can only want something so hard without taking steps to make it happen. If you want a niche to be filled, you’ll probably have to do it yourself even if you’re not qualified at first. However, when it came to Cryodrome, I wanted it to be a fun experience for me too. I decided to make it as freeform as possible. No route, no destination, no expected speed. All would be determined by the people who showed up.
I loathe when people brand themselves. I made the decision to not appear in photos and to remain detached from it on social media (back when this website was but a twinkle in my eye). I am not a brand. Neither is Cryodrome. I don’t sell anything. Cryodrome costs me money. It’s a hobby, not a side hustle. Lots of people I meet have ideas about what Cryodrome should be without ever having gone on a ride. They can start their own rides if they really want that.
For three seasons we rode in mostly good weather. During season 2 the successor to Dear PoC, Wednesday Night Ride (WNR), also rode all winter. They got the worse weather though. It was a similarly small group with some overlap between mine and theirs. By season 3 of Cryodrome both WNR and Friday Night Ride (FNR) were riding through winter as well.
At the end of season 2 I hosted a relay race in a parking lot. I organized the whole event. I made the google doc for signing up, ordered boxed coffee, planned the route, procured the bike everyone would ride, made prizes by hand, and announced/audio recorded the event on tape. It was a big and stressful undertaking for me even with only three teams competing.
Season 3 I made attendance booklets for all participants and spaced out three tiers of prizes to be given out based on number of rides attended. I carved a stamp for tracking rides. I made pins out of bottle caps and soda tabs. The safety pins were from when I pinned my race bib on for collegiate cycling. I made a spoke card and had an etsy seller print them. And finally, I learned how to cross stitch thinking the final prize would be patches. After spending hours on a single patch, I decided to get patches from etsy as well.
I think after the relay race I wanted to one-up the ride and I think I accomplished that with the prize system. On the other hand, one-upping myself does not lead to a long-lived project. I burned myself out. The idea of doing season 4 and making it more bare bones bums me out. I would rather end the ride aspect of Cryodrome on a high note. And now that there are two rides that last all winter, I no longer feel like Cryodrome is as needed as it used to be for the community. I’m not sure if “needed” is even the right word. I think I needed it, and now I don’t. I’m thankful for the ride because it spurred me on creatively and gave me a name to put my projects under. I will continue to learn and create under the Cryodrome name, but for the foreseeable future, rides are not going to happen.
Thank you to every Cryonaut that has ever attended a ride. It’s been fun.