HISTORY - MOONFEST

What is MoonFest, and how did I get the idea?

Well for me it all started on October 14, 2002. By chance I picked up the California section of the LA Times to read during lunch. The caption of an article on page 4 caught my attention, Laguna Niguel's 'Moon-Fest' Has Become City's Cheeky Tradition. It was written by Times Staff Writer Dave McKibben. It was a very humorous piece on what had become a 24 year tradition, where people go to a bar and then go out to 'moon' the Amtrak trains that go by on that day.

I'd recently done a few 100 mile bicycling events with The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team In Training LA cycling team. On one of our training rides each season we would ride to San Juan Capistrano and take the train back.

After reading Mr. McKibben's article I was so excited I thought I was going to explode!

I decided that day – Monday October 14th 2002 – that I wanted to plan a bike ride on that particular July day as a cycling event. MoonFest was born!!

For MoonFest 2003 I invited all the past and current LA Chapter TNT Cyclists that I knew.

For MoonFest 2004 I invited even more people and charged an extra $5 to go towards fundraising for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society if they hadn't cycled with TNT before. I also added an extra loop for those that wanted to either witness or join in on the festivities! (Now, THAT was a good idea)!! Amtrak added an extra car to the train just for our group!

Sadly, there was no MoonFest 2005.

Anyway, each year I learned what worked what needed to be improved. I will continue to work some of the bugs out! So hopefully each year is better than the last. And if I have my way, as long as there are people in Laguna Niguel mooning the train, I will organize a ride each year from now on!