I want to tell you a story about a monkey…
Ten years ago, I went on a bike ride with Levi Leipheimer and 5,000 other people from around the world, known as Levi's Gran Fondo. This is an annual pilgrimage for road bike enthusiasts, people who ride on that black stuff with tar in it (something I do less of these days, though I still maintain the utmost respect for it).
It was at Levi's ride that I became unconstrained in my desire to achieve something similar in my home town of Ketchum, Idaho: a ride that welcomed people to my back yard, a destination event that was fun but also challenging. So I asked the founders of Bike Monkey if could pick their "monkey brain" with questions about a few odds and ends in my quest to create Rebecca's Private Idaho. Instead, they rolled their sleeves and helped me make my event a success in year one, way back in 2013!
There isn't one formula for how something like RPI can be achieved, but rather a combination of formulas like what the event producers at Bike Monkey have achieved. They brought their talents to to Idaho, gifted RPI with a strong start, and left, not for any reason other than that in 2013, their model was building their own events. For the Bike Monkey of 2013, RPI was an anomaly. And for that we are lucky.
Every good Bike Monkey does fine...
Fast forward to the present, and as the story goes, we've been running RPI with a mix of really hardworking teams that have crushed it. Many of those teams remain an integral part of our event, even though the event has changed and evolved over time, and their friendly faces will greet you in Idaho this August. None of the important familiarity you have with RPI is going to change. Ever.
But...a good event demands great leadership, structure, and organization. While I've done this work with a small team for the last decade, I've often reminisced about the way Bike Monkey did it originally, as well as about the time I didn't really have to worry about a million and a half little details that solid organizers can achieve with muscle memory.
Lucky me, lucky you, I'm excited to share with you some truly great news: Bike Monkey is back! Yup, you heard that right. The cast and crew that jumpstarted Rebecca's Private Idaho in the very beginning is coming back in full force to lead us forward in our ten-year anniversary and into the future beyond!
What does it mean?
Well, for one thing, it means I don't have to feel like I'm trying to read Fox in Socks every time we have a planning session. But more importantly, it means that I and everyone involved with RPI are going to be able to rest easy that a well-oiled machine is steering our ship. Behind the scenes, things are going to be done differently, and at the end of the day, that'll just make everything better. It will free us up to do our ten-year anniversary a solid and make it our best year yet!
I'm very much looking forward to this next leg of our journey with the original co- founders of RPI back in the driver's seat. Together we're going to deliver an RPI experience like never before!
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