2009 North American Vegan Fitness Gathering, Ann Arbor, MI

[loveliberate]

SUMMER 2009 - NORTH AMERICAN VEGAN FITNESS GATHERING - ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
August 13th through the 16th

Get involved in making this happen!

Some suggested activities:
- Hiking
- Camping
- Swimming: pool & open water
- Water polo
- Triathalon
- Futbol (aka "soccer")
- Strongperson competition
- Bicycling
- Weight Lifting
- Eating lots of great food
- Rock Climbing
- Running

Probable participants:
- xrodolfox
- seasiren

Possible participants:
- frostfire
- wannalift
- JP
- .flux
- runrevolt
- loveliberate
- spanna
- pekka
- kalibaby
- vegcrow
- fredrikw?
- Dave Noisy
- Robert Cheeke

[xrodolfox]

Well, I'd love to have it close. I have a limited budget, and travel is an issue for me.

If it's in Michigan, I can help plan. There's three of us here: Drummer Boy and SeaSiren. I don't know what sort of help they can bring.

Otherwise, my family and I travel routinely to St. Pete Beach Florida, and I have to go to school in Amherst MA in the summers. So for me, those places (like the entire east coast if it's on the right weekend) work for me.

Any suggestions?

One thing is that Toronto and SF and NYC are very vegan friendly.

[loveliberate]

Out East, I'd pick: Pittsburgh, Montreal or Asheville. Out this way, we have 5 of the best cities for vegans: Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria & Eugene.

Generally, I definitely want the event to be child/family friendly, not too pricey & otherwise as inclusive as possible. Being in or at least near lots of wild nature would be great too!

[wannalift]

Seattle and Vancouver are amazing and would be my choices. I would go pretty much anywhere though.

[xrodolfox]

Pittsburg is a vegan friendly city?

I do think that we should pick a place where people on this board know and live and/or work. That'll make this a whole lot easier to plan and schedule.

On the Midwest:
Oh, I should've formally cited my preferences for Ann Arbor, MI as a great place to have this event. It's got a lot of vegan friendly restaurants, nice places to go on long bike rides, lakes, pools, gyms, trails, hiking (in local parks and things), etc. It is small, and compared to the east and west coasts (and Canada), it should be cheaper. Oh, there's good entertainment, and of course we can see or do.

Other than that, I think that Yellow Springs, OH, is great. Ashville is good too, but I'd rather stick close by. Chicago is EXCELLENT, but we'd have to get someone from there to organize it. Chicago is brilliant as far as vegan restaurants go. Oh, and there's Lawrence, KA. That's good too.

However, on the West Coast I still root for SF. That's got such a great combo of outdoors, sport venues, and good food.

On the East Coast, I would still prefer some place that's close to MA.

Regardless of my personal preferences, we should pick a place where someone from this board resides!

So perhaps we should state that.

I live in SE Michigan and I could help organize a meetup in Ann Arbor, MI for this spring or summer. I can't really help anywhere else unless it's just doing something liek a workshop or something. [/b]

[xrodolfox]

I forgot to mention the most important part:

If you are reading this, and you could do organize a VF NA, then PLEASE say so. I don't want to do the whole thing in Ann Arbor by default.

The pick of cities is great, but ONLY if someone can really do it.

[loveliberate]

I also think that the gathering should be somewhere with local board members willing & able to make things happen. I will help if it is held in or near Portland -aka- the world's most vegan-friendly city. That said, I cant take on too much responsibility personally & I don't think we should rush to pick a location until more folks have weighed in.

Pittsburgh seems pretty vegan friendly to me with a decent amount of vegan friendly food options:
http://www.happycow.net/north_america/u ... index.html and a good-sized vegan community: http://www.meetup.com/pittsburgh-vegans & http://www.theveganpeople.com

Lots of VF members live in & near Pittsburgh, it's centrally located for the NE US & SE Canada, plus Pittsburgh folks have repeatedly offered to host a VB&F gathering.

Ann Arbor sounds best to me off of your list of mid-west cities though Madison, Wisconsin sounds great too: http://www.vegmadison.com

I strongly vote against Chicago & am not too into SF either. Something near Arcata & the Redwoods could be very nice though!

[runrevolt]

Being one who would like to come to one of these events, but has very limited leeway in my schedule, I'd suggest something in the midwest due to its centralized location (and proximity to mine!). It would be a tough decision though since our numbers here are relatively small and we seem to be scattered everywhere. Someone will have to make an effort regardless where we might hold it.

Then again, if we make it centralized and try to make it more of a "recruitment" gathering, we might bring more like-minded people into the fold.

Just some ideas.

So yea, I vote indianapolis. No vegan specific restaurants. Barely any vegetarian restaurants. Hard to do anything but drive. No culture. Pretty lackluster weather. sounds perfect!!!!

I'd actually be down for chicago or somewhere around minneapolis.

[Frostfire]

Based on the fact that I could do a lot to organize an event like this (as a grad student, sometimes I have more time than money!), I'll throw in Salt Lake City as my vote. Amazing outdoor sports area, okay indoor sports and very vegan friendly. At least 3 exclusively vegan restaurants and dozens apon dozens of vegan friendly restaurants. Migth not be in time for 2009, but they are building a veledrome and year-round ice climbing in Ogden (1/2 hour north of SLC). I could go on about sports opportunities, but I'll leave it at this for now

It would have to be in August as I will be in Houston for the earlier part of the summer.

[Rochellita]

It's about time

If I could stick my Euro VF nose in here and say I hope it's somewhere nice because I'm pretty sure JP and I would make it over. It'd be a good way to meet the US part of the VF community.

[xrodolfox]

loveliberate, do you mind starting a list of general geographic areas or cities mentioned?

Then, once we narrow it down a bit, we can have a poll.

I've heard suggested:
Pittsburgh, PA
Montreal, QE
Asheville, NC
Portland, OR
Seattle, OR
Vancouver, BC
Victoria, BC
Eugene, OR
Seatle, WA
Madison, WI
Ann Arbor, MI
Pittsburg, PA
NYC, NY
Chicago, IL (one negative vote)
SLC, UT
Indianapolis, IN

Perhaps a list here with who votes and how to vote and all that instead of a public list. I guess that's more of a tally.

I suggest that everyone gets to suggest locations. However, only those who would be willing to make it (or live in the America's, north and south) get to vote. Three votes per person, and you can put them all in one city if you are willing to organize the VF gathering there yourself. If you get others in that area willing to organize it, then that locale gets up to six votes for two folks. Is that too complicated?
Perhaps .flux and the Euro peeps can help with how they picked a location?

[loveliberate]

do you mind starting a list of general geographic areas or cities mentioned?

Didn't ya just do that?!

I agree with the idea of figuring out our top (3 or 5 maybe?) picks & then doing a poll. I'd add that we should only include places in the poll if one or more locals from those places are willing & able to help make this happen. That might be easier if we had a more defined plan/idea of what we want this gathering to be like...

There's lot's of great places on the list but my top picks are:
- Portland, OR: North America's most vegan-friendly city & a very nice place all-around place
- Pittsburgh, PA: seems like a good compromise option for many folks from the eastern US & lots of VF folks there
- Victoria, BC: very pleasant smaller city with more vegan options than many places much larger, excellent natural surroundings + Vancouver is close enough for doing a day trip

I sure hope .flux, JP & other Euro folks can come over!

[loveliberate]

So yea, I vote indianapolis.

NO F-ING WAY!!!

That said: Bloomington, IN actually seems very nice - any VF folks there?

[xrodolfox]

do you mind starting a list of general geographic areas or cities mentioned?

Didn't ya just do that?! :lol

I meant a list on the opening page of this thread. That way others can open this thread and see that list and know what's up. Then you could update it when need be to keep track of what's what and all that.

[loveliberate]

I understand now comp@ - I'll get started right away.

Everyone please have a look & share your thoughts. Please let me know if you are interested in coming and I'll add you to that list. Besides .flux & JP, anyone else from outside of the usa & canada likely to join us?

Here are some more of my thoughts: I suggest that we keep the discussion completely open through the end of the month, then start hammering down the details next month with date & location polls, etc. I don't know if we have enough members from Mexico or points south for it to matter but it could be cool to have a location in Mexico or at least close to it.

.flux or some other VF Admin. type,
Could ya'll please sticky this thread &/or put a link to it in the "Current topics and highlights" section? Also, should we move this to the events or VF organizing sections? Thanks!