The servers handling registration for the 2013 Cycle Oregon ride collapsed shortly after people started signing up on Wednesday. Now the organization is still digging out of the snafu and they hope to have everything cleaned up by Monday.
Cycle Oregon went to online-only registration in 2012 and people clamored to sign up. They filled a record 2,000 spots in just 31 minutes. With that in mind, people wanted to make sure they didn’t get left out. Cycle Oregon used a new registration vendor this year (PreRace.com), and it seems they couldn’t handle the ride’s popularity.
At 5:47 pm on Wednesday, Cycle Oregon sent out an email to apologize and update folks on the situation. Ride Director Steve Schulz told us this morning that they’ve assembled volunteers in their north Portland office that are going through each registration one-by-one to clear things up, process refunds, and so on. “Yes, it’s a bit like triage in here,” he said.
The problems were caused not only by the initial load on the servers, but as people’s registrations didn’t get through, they would try again. And again. This caused a “bottleneck situation” according to Schulz. While there have been a few people who are “very frustrated” (Schulz put it diplomatically) about the problems, about 98% have been very positive and understanding.
Schulz said they hope to have everything squared away and cleaned up by the end of this Monday. It’s been a rough couple days for Cycle Oregon and their fans, but Schulz says, “We’ll make right by everyone, we’re working as hard as we can to make things better.”
The good news is that there are still spaces left on the ride and the registration site is working fine now.