This Spring GORC volunteers devoted 1,850+ cumulative hours building and maintaining our region’s trails. GORC and Bike Surgeon hosted the Spring 2015 Fatbike raffle party at Bike Surgeon’s location in Shiloh, Illinois. Dozens of dedicated GORC members and volunteers arrived for an evening of light food and drinks with several people having spent the afternoon to trimming back the vegetation on the SIUE trail system.
With 121 unique volunteers each with multiple entries ranging from one to over 24 (super volunteers that attended every trail build worth two entries per trail event) the huge mixing bowl was filled with hundreds of paper strips noting the name and date of the entry. The raffle began around 6:30pm with 10 runners-up attendance prizes ranging from Bike Surgeon T-shirts to GORC water bottles and socks. All the entries were then tossed back into the bowl and mixed again.
The 2015 Specialized Fatboy was finally now up for grabs by anyone who had attended at least one social or trail building event and was a current paid GORC member at the time of the raffle party. Only about 20% of the people entered into the raffle were in attendance so the odds were not great that someone present would be announced…
But that’s exactly what happened! A random name was drawn …. Melisa Link – And she was present! The entry that got her the $2,100.00 grand prize was from Indian Camp Creek on 03/21/2015.
The photo of her being presented the bike by Chris Norrington from Bike Surgeon is a representation of the brand new bike that will be correctly sized to fit Melisa and ordered in the “GORC Green” colorway. Post-raffle the party moved outside as several folks demoed the 2016 Specialized StumpJumper and pedaled the Fatboy around the parking lot. The Specialized commuter E-bike was broken out and 30mph “demos” were the hot ticket. And of course the kids loved the Strider bikes and mini-fatbikes.
Hats off to everyone who spent time on the trails to maintain them and build new ones! GORC applauds your efforts and please realize that without you, our important volunteers, our region’s trails would not grow! Every contribution of sweat labor benefits our outdoor recreation experience and we look forward to seeing you this Fall.
Cheers and see you on the trails.