Pointless Prize Thread 2022

**Serdar** · 11-27-2021, 05:51 AM

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Pointless Prize Thread 2022!

Pointless Prizes are entertaining activities that I enjoyed last year as a first-time participant of Freezing Saddles. This year, I volunteer to make winter riding mixed with fun happen again. So please, find the answers to some questions you might have about pointless prizes below.

Question
Who can participate in Pointless Prizes?
Answer
Any participant of the Freezing Saddles 2022 can participate in Pointless Prizes.

Question
Who can sponsor a Pointless Prize?
Answer
Anyone can sponsor a prize. In addition, participants and non-participants of the Freezing Saddles 2022 can sponsor a prize.

Question
What are Pointless Prizes?
Answer
Pointless Prizes can be about anything! They can range from serious topics like Civil War History Prize to fun ones like CalvinBall.

Check out last year's thread to see examples.

I will be updating this thread with the list of the Pointless Prizes 2022. So please, volunteer to sponsor a prize, and stay tuned for updates!

Here is the current list of Pointless Prizes:
Prize Name (Sponsor) - Description #Hashtag

1) Immigrants Heritage (Serdar) - any sign of immigrants achievements and contribution to the development of the United States #ImHer

2) Freezing Saddles Gives Back (Judd) - This pointless prize encourages BAFS participants to volunteer

3) Coffee Ride (chuxtr) - the most number of rides for coffee #coffeeride

4) Phone Ride (chuxtr) - use your phones to record rides rather than a bike computer #phoneride

5) Extra Mile (epilsk) - the person or people who have the most compelling stories of how they overcame challenges to get their daily mile recorded

6) SOCKS! SOCKS! SOCKS! (Jessica Hirschhorn) - post photos of your socks #socks

7) 2022 Photo Scavenger Hunt (rumipumi and Mtansill) - on your ride, find the requested item(s), and post photos on this forum and your Strava feed #scavhunt

8) Little Free Library (Kbikeva and LeftyLaura) - ride and find little free libraries our there #FSBOOKS

9) Post Office (AlanA) - find post offices while riding your bike #PO

10) Monuments and Memorials (HokieBeth) - ride at least 1 mile and snap a pic of your bike at a monument or memorial #monuments

11) Clever Caption Photo (Steve O) - devise clever and funny captions

12) "You Carried WHAT?!" (komorebi) - carry or haul things by bike, take a photo of your bike and cargo, and post that photo on the forum

13) Tandem Rides! (shirag) - ride a tandem bike and tag those rides with #tandem

14) Name Game (wheels&wings) - find a location or an establishment that bears your name, ride there, and take a picture to show you were there. #namegame

15) Public Art Finder (Boomer2U) - ride to any art form freely accessible to the public #publicartfinder

16) License Plates (bigredboiler) - find & photograph license plates from all 50 States & DC #plates

17) Meh-diocrity Pointless Prize (SteveO) - for ending up exactly in the middle of the standings: team and individual

18) BAFS Swag Pointless Prize - March 5 (reji) - On March 5, ride at least 5 miles, take the picture of your BAFS swag and post by midnight.

**Kristen_H** · 11-28-2021, 06:54 PM

Serdar you are awesome doing this for all of us to add to the enjoyment of Freezing Saddles! Thank you!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**ChristinaSwartz** · 12-06-2021, 11:08 AM

Thanks for Volunteering!

**bmillah** · 12-09-2021, 10:13 AM

I'm interested in sponsoring a PP, can you provide more information on how the pointless prizes tracked and the responsibilities for volunteers who wish to sponsor one?

Just want to make sure that what I'm thinking is trackable. Maybe there is someone on the dev team we can run ideas by to make sure it's realistically accounted for?

Really trying to avoid tallying and updating a spreadsheet of riders before bed each night.

**Serdar** · 12-09-2021, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by bmillah

I'm interested in sponsoring a PP, can you provide more information on how the pointless prizes tracked and the responsibilities for volunteers who wish to sponsor one?

Just want to make sure that what I'm thinking is trackable. Maybe there is someone on the dev team we can run ideas by to make sure it's realistically accounted for?

Really trying to avoid tallying and updating a spreadsheet of riders before bed each night.

I think you do not have to do tallying if you set a rule of reaching one pointless prize destination per ride. That way, the Freezing Saddles website will automatically calculate or do tallying based on the hashtags on participants' Strava accounts.

**LhasaCM** · 12-09-2021, 07:56 PM

Originally Posted by Serdar

I think you do not have to do tallying if you set a rule of reaching one pointless prize destination per ride. That way, the Freezing Saddles website will automatically calculate or do tallying based on the hashtags on participants' Strava accounts.

The hashtag-based leaderboards count both the number of rides and number of miles, depending on what's of interest, and can be automatically generated for any desired hashtag (where the hashtag is added to the ride title in Strava).

Other pointless prizes in the past that have been tracked by the website have been tied to specific Strava segments, or other calculations based on ride data (e.g., elevation per mile, or least variance), but are not already "built-in" so would require a bit of development. Or more than a bit if something complicated

If someone has a specific idea but isn't sure how it could be tracked - go ahead and ask! Plenty of opinionated people are around to chime in.

**Steve O** · 12-10-2021, 10:35 AM

Originally Posted by bmillah

I'm interested in sponsoring a PP, can you provide more information on how the pointless prizes tracked and the responsibilities for volunteers who wish to sponsor one?

Just want to make sure that what I'm thinking is trackable. Maybe there is someone on the dev team we can run ideas by to make sure it's realistically accounted for?

Really trying to avoid tallying and updating a spreadsheet of riders before bed each night.

Go to freezingsaddles.org and click on the various tabs at the top. You will see a gazillion different sorts of data points, and PPs and that have been offered in previous years. Some are defunct and others may be sponsored by previous offerors or picked up by someone new.
You are not limited by what you see there, but it may stir your creative juices.

Those are the trackable kind of PPs. There are others that appear on this forum that are not tracked on the home page. Last year's popular Daily Photo PP, offered by drevil, was run on a separate thread on this forum.

Hope this helps.