One of the throughlines in our Kickstarter kids’ picture book, The Pedal Turns the Crank, will be diversity of all kinds, with the common thread that everyone loves bicycles (and loves their families).
That means different kinds of families, different kinds of backgrounds, different kinds of locations, and everybody having adventures on bikes, with adults watching out for the children (who are the stars).
It also means different bike cultures. We’re not letting ourselves nail down exactly which bike cultures will be most featured yet (and there’s a big final spread where some of the things we couldn’t fit elsewhere can be allowed to flower), but what you’re looking at above is Khai’s notes from Friday’s weekly production meeting, showing our ideas for a rando spread!
“Rando” is (in the tiny little niche sport of randonneuring) short for “randonneuring.” It’s my sport, and I love it beyond reason. It’s endurance cycling over very long distances, self-supported (no follow vehicles, and rules about what kind of help you can and can’t get), and against the clock – but not racing. There’s a route you have to cover within a certain number of hours, checking in along the way at “controls” (checkpoints) along the way, which you have to reach within certain time windows.
One of the common types of control is a convenience store, where either you get a receipt (its timestamp will prove what time you were there) or have someone (the clerk, a club volunteer) sign and timestamp your “brevet card,” which you have to carry through the whole event.
The illustration we landed on is all about one of those convenience stores – likely a WaWa, though we probably can’t be explicit about that for trademark reasons – at 2am, where a rowdy little tribe of kid randonneurs is regrouping under the supervision of their adult(s), throwing away food wrappers, buying snacks, getting their brevet cards signed, lining up at the bathroom, taking naps on the concrete, and all the other things randos (and other children) do at convenience stores.
KICKSTARTER UPDATE
The official Kickstarter page is under construction, still needs a video, a tight budget, rewards really nailed down, etc. Which is all lurching along, and will go live when I’ve got it all together. Until then, I’ll keep doing weekly “pre-launch buzz” blog posts after each production meeting, and I really hope you’ll keep checking in.
Keith Snyder 