This article is the twentieth in a series profiling the varied and amazing nominees for the 2008 Alice B. Toeclips Awards, which will be presented to five winners at the Alice Awards & Auction tomorrow night. We won't have time to interview everyone, so be sure to check out their descriptions online. This profile was written by BTA correspondent John McLaren

Cycle Oregon isn’t just a ride. The organization returns a good deal of the money earned on supported rides to the small and sometimes struggling communities visited by its riders. Grants of up to $50,000 cover special projects, and the communities receive about $120,000 a year for services rendered the riders while en route. And Cycle Oregon invests yet more funds in bike advocacy at the state and national levels.

One striking case in point: a $50,000 grant to the city of Halfway. With that as seed money, Halfway raised another $200,000 to avoid foreclosure on the county fairgrounds which were important to the town and were used as a campsite by Cycle Oregon several years ago.

This summer those fairgrounds will again be an overnight stopover for Cycle Oregon riders on a 456-mile bike tour around the fringe of the Wallowa Mountains. The seven-day excursion, known as The Wild Wheeled West, is expected to draw 2,000 riders, who will each pay at least $825 to take part, and it is already sold out.

Over the last 20 years, more than 40,000 people have joined Cycle Oregon on physically challenging rides that exposed them to the beauty of Oregon’s backcountry. “We’ve introduced thousands of riders to rural communities where cyclists were not well understood,” says Jerry Norquist, Cycle Oregon’s executive director and himself a cyclist of long standing. “Rural communities which once were not receptive now ask when are you coming back.”

Besides the annual week-long distance ride, Cycle Oregon also sponsors a three-day Weekend at the Beach journey and an annual “policymakers” ride showcasing what Portland and Vancouver are doing to promote bicycling. Last year the invitation-only ride drew about 140 riders, many of them elected officials and leaders involved with transportation and parks issues.

Proceeds from all of these rides feed the Cycle Oregon Fund, now worth about $1.25 million. The Fund disburses about $100,000 in grants every year, to communities visited by the rides and for bicycling advocacy in Oregon.

If you didn’t receive a grant directly from the Cycle Oregon Fund, you might not know how much good work and good will they support for bicycling around the state. Here are a few grants given recently:

$10,000 to the city of Independence, to complete a bike path that connects three schools
$10,000 to the city of Vernonia, to develop a recreational bicycle skills park
$30,000 (with the Nike Foundation) to Grant County for an eight-lane running track used by every high school in the county
$50,000 to help restock Diamond Lake with fish
$1,200 to Independence for a Bike Safety Fair and bike helmets
$2,500 to the city of Halfway for a library beautification project
$20,000 to the BTA for bicycle advocacy work
$15,000 to the Community Cycling Center for youth bicycle programs

As an organization, Cycle Oregon is a vocal advocate for better laws and more funding for bicycling – recreational and transportational – at the state and federal levels. Delegates from Cycle Oregon participate in the week-long bike conference in Washington DC, in which bike advocates visit the Oregon Congressional delegation and appointed officials to lobby for more federal support for our efforts here.

Cycle Oregon uses its influence to raise the profile of bicycling around the state, and uses proceed from its events to support the places that make such great biking possible and to invest in an even bikier future for Oregon.

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