worthy (?) causes

Money is tight all around, right?  Major foundations are going under, humanitarian groups are going begging, as already-promised funds disappear from under them, like bad magic.  What's that got to do with cycling?  Well, if you're making some year-end donations all the same, consider tossing a few bucks at one of the following.

1. Podium cafe VDS competition swag fund.  Chris turns out to be way too polite to remind us monthly, despite his half-hearted promise to do so.  Unprompted by Chris here's a remember that you can paypal a sum, modest or otherwise, to podiumcafe@yahoo.com

2. Cyclingfever has had a couple of different competition-specific paypal links up.  Don't  know if they stay functional from year to year (update, anyone?) but the old Tour of CA link can be found (translated version!) here.  (Needs a link on the ever-helpful "startist" page.)

3. Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, blah blah blah.  But it's a nice, quick starting place, and it gave us a lot of naughty editing fun in the recent past. The cycling project is certainly laudable.  Wikipedia is still a bit short of their fundraising goal, and donations are tax-deductible in the US (and in some other countries, via donations to local chapters).

4. I'm sure your local bike support network could use a few bucks--ours was flying high and flush with new members while the weather was good and gas prices are up, (and in the case of Bike-PGH, when it looked like a transit strike was looming.) But that was then, this is now.  

5. Plenty of national groups too (though I have to wonder if rails to trails will, at some point, need to change their name to "rails and trails," if we start to "unbank" any of those rail corridors). I'll leave it to yinz/youse/you/all y'all to post your faves.

6. And, oh--support your local bike shop. And bike mags / rags.

People who do not get free gifts?  For many of us, Spring time of year where CTV re-sucks money from our paypal account (where they like to set things up for a recurring annual  "auto-renew" debit). In the past, people have found it helpful to go into paypal and cancel that "auto-renew" feature, allowing them to instead re-up with CTV only if CTV convinces them that this time, it will deliver the goods.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of rant.