C.H. Evans Brewing’s Albany Pump Station thanks everybody who helped make the second Tour de Habitat so successful!
Despite a miserable weather forecast, the 2008 Tour de Habitat was a great success! We had 67 riders, which was 22 more than last year, and we raised over $15,000 for Capital District Habitat for Humanity. That was almost double the amount from the previous year!

This money will help Habitat continue their critical work here in Albany. I thank you all for your fund-raising efforts, as well as your cycling stamina.

The weatherman said that it would rain on us all day, but he was very wrong. In fact, sunburn ended up being one of my problems on a day that started damp but ended up very warm and humid.

Course maps can still be found after the following links:

100 mile ride

50 mile ride

Eric from Albany's Downtube Cycle and Fitness was again gracious enough to be our event mechanic. Here he is sipping a liquid that does not appear to be beer prior to the start of the century ride. Why would anyone drink something other than beer?

As you can see, the weather was rather dreary at 7:30 a.m. Black and white emphasizes this point.

Century rider Dave Cherubin straps on his helmet while Mark Chudzicki checks his rear wheel for a flat. That's Bill McCoskery donning his helmet behind Mark. We'll see more of him later...
Century rider and Capital Bicycle Racing Club Member Danny Goodwin prepares for the ride. Nutella and banana sandwiches are his secret to avoiding the dreaded wall.
Here's the registration table, manned by Joe Minor, Ryan Dillon and Ericka Small, Habitat's Development Director. Her contribution to the event is enormous; it wouldn't happen without her. I'd like to see her riding the Tour next year, but then who would do all the work back at the staging area?
My goal for this year's Tour de Habitat was to ride the century fast enough to get back in time to also ride the 10 mile route with my daughter. I had a feeling this wasn't going to happen pretty early on: about 3 miles into the ride Bill hit one of Albany's many bike traps. Fortunately, he was approaching the intersection slowly and wasn't hurt, but he did destroy his front wheel, pictured here in the trap.

Albany could do much to improve its streets for cyclists and pedestrians. Aside from countless wheel traps, there are sidewalks all over downtown with slick metal grates spanning most of their width, and little accommodation is made for pedestrians and bikes when planning streets. Hopefully events like the TdH will help bring change.

We had to wait for Eric to loan Bill a new wheel before we could get going. A couple of miles later, another in our group got a flat. In the end, we averaged about 6.5 mph for the first hour we were out. We'd need Lance Armstrong and Eddie Merckx pulling us for the rest of the ride to achieve my goal!

Thanks again to Eric for being there!

Follow the links below to the other pages
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Capital District Habitat for Humanity (CDHfH) is a not-for-profit housing partnership dedicated to building decent and affordable housing for low-income families in need. Established in 1988, CDHfH is an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. To date, CDHfH has built 37 homes in Albany.

Habitat uses volunteer labor and donations of money and materials to provide affordable homeownership to those people who would not otherwise have that opportunity. Habitat creates systemic social change by giving the economically disenfranchised the tools necessary to break the cycle of poverty.