On a long distance bicycle adventure with lots of people, we’ve found it’s helpful to have some people who are willing to take on certain responsibilities and bring or learn certain skills. Below is a list of the roles that have worked for us in the past.  Some of these roles can be taken on by the same person, or can rotate between riders, and some are roles that require specific skills while others can be played by anyone who’s into playing!

You may find that it works best to ride together for a day and see what roles need to be filled, especially if a lot of people in your hub haven’t done a lot of bike touring.  It can be hard to get an idea of what needs to be done on the road until you’ve actually been on the road.

1. Bike Mechanic - This person should know how to fix bikes. While you definitely don’t need someone who is a super experienced mechanic, it’s great to have someone who knows how to do things like replace broken spokes, true wheels, adjust shifters and derailleurs, replace cables, and do other minor adjustments.  Everyone in your hub should know how to change a flat tire!  There are great classes at many community bike projects if you want to learn how to do this stuff – check out this directory to find the bike project nearest you.

2. Medic - This person should know how to fix people.  Unfortunately, our fragile bodies can get bruised, scraped, bumped, sick, or otherwise damaged on the road, and you’ll want to have someone with some knowledge of how to fix them!  Someone who has gone through a Wilderness First Aid or Wilderness First Responder class has plenty of experience to be your medic, and this is something that anyone can do! For more info and class locations, see the NOLS page.

3. Daily Facilitators - Each day, your hub will be faced with logistical decisions and scheduling as you travel down the road. It’s nice to have people who are designated to think about those decisions and plan out each day, so you’re not trying to make all your logistical decisions as a group.  For big decisions, it can be really helpful to have people scout out the options so that the group has proposals to discuss. We call these people daily facilitators, but you can call them magic makers, grand poobahs, or whatever you feel like. We had two facilitators per day, and switched off each day after dinner with the “passing of the torch”*.

*The torch is what we called a ziploc bag that contained important information about the riders, including medical information.  The daily facilitators were the first point of contact for emergencies, so they were in charge of keeping track of all the emergency contact info.

Some of the things that daily facilitators can coordinate include:

  • setting a wake-up time and waking people up
  • proposing lunch stops and food buying locations
  • signing people up for daily responsibilities, coordinating riding groups
  • providing an overview of the day, going through the route and making sure everyone knows where they’re going
  • leading stretching
  • leading games in the morning and evening
  • creating and facilitating evening activities
  • creating a menu and shopping list
  • staying with riding groups (see Ride Culture for more on riding groups)
  • reminding people to drink water
  • taking care of group safety

4. Hub Liaison - This person will be responsible for communicating with the other hubs on the Road to Detroit and relaying info between your hub and the rest of the hubs.  This person will be particularly important before the ride, when there will be a lot of coordination between the hubs to get everyone to orientation and successfully on the road.

5. Sleeping Place/Route Coordinator - This person should really like maps, because they’re the one who will figure out how you’re getting from place to place!  While everyone in your hub should theoretically know where you’re going and how you’re getting there, it’s a good idea to have one person who is good at using online mapping (like google maps and mapquest) to plan bike routes, find campgrounds, etc. There will be some resources around route planning and camping available to all the hubs, but if your hub decides to ride farther or less far, you’ll need a way to figure out how to get to wherever you end up sleeping.

6. Bike Touring Point Person – this person is someone who has experience bike touring, and helps all the members of the hub get prepared to have an awesome ride.  This person is responsible for facilitating the pre-trip decisions that need to get made and working with the hub liaison to communicate with the rest of the riders on the Road to Detroit.