Each event has their own situation, organizational structure, and venues that they work with. Each of these have their own policies and procedures. We couldn’t get all of the permissions required to host the events.

We take the safety and health of the participants and the volunteers extremely seriously. We could have modified or eliminated some of the features of the events in order to improve safety, but then we would be organizing an event that doesn’t meet our standards, nor give you the value and levels of fun that you expect and deserve. We would rather cancel the events than force a substandard compromise upon you.

Like most events, we must prepay many expenses and place non-refundable deposits on a number of items in order for the event to occur. Unfortunately, many of these expenditures were incurred well before the COVID-19 crisis began.

Our events have had no refund policies for many years, including for reasons of Force Majeure. We started the latter after a snowstorm in 2015 forced us to postpone the Hell of Hunterdon. At this time, we offered refunds to those that could not participate on the new date. That decision nearly bankrupted the event series.

While we purchase event cancellation insurance, the policy (like most) does not cover pandemics or communicable diseases.

That said, we are in unprecedented times, and we don’t want to take unfair advantage of anyone. Credits were determined to be a good compromise, enabling the events to be held in the future, while preserving the value of your entry fee. Additionally, we enabled the credits to be used towards ANY of our events or merchandise offered on BikeReg through 2022.

Some events are doing this, but since we organize multiple events, we wanted to give you as much flexibility as possible, therefore issuing credits valid towards all events in 2021 & 2022 made more sense to us, rather than restricting your usage.

If this is your situation, please send us a direct email message: kermessehq@gmail.com We will review these on a case-by-case basis. Please note that the fee you paid to BikeReg at the time of registration is not refundable under any circumstances (per BikeReg’s policy).

We are working with BikeReg to issue these; they will send you an email message showing your balance, giving you a coupon code, which will allow you to redeem your credit, until your balance is exhausted up until December 31, 2022.

An advantage of the BikeReg credit is that you don’t have to pay their service fees on the value of the credit. So if you have a $50 credit and use it towards a $50 entry fee, you will not pay any BikeReg fees on this transaction. If you have a $50 credit and use it towards a $65 entry fee, you will only pay BikeReg’s fee on the $15 difference.

With reopening plans laid out by officials, and public health conditions looking like they were improving, we were working towards being able to have the postponed events. We gave it a full effort, but unfortunately, we were not able to receive all the permissions required to host the events as intended.

We set our internal decision deadline as July 31st. We estimated it would take 4-6 weeks from when we received initial permission to get things re-organized. This puts us into September. We also reasoned that if we hadn’t received the permissions by the end of July, we had no reason to believe we’d receive them by the end of August, which would have pushed us into October.

We didn’t want to string everyone along indefinitely, so making the decision now allows us to cease unfruitful efforts, while allowing us to attempt to implement other options for this autumn.

Since all merchandise purchases are special orders, refunds are not possible.

We sent out an email message a few weeks ago with various options on how you can get your items. We will send an updated message to all who have purchased merchandise, but have yet to claim their items.

Earlier this year we announced a “Save the Date” for the Oktoberfest Ride on October 18th. We haven’t yet opened registration. Our host brewery has given us conditional approval to hold the event (meaning if they are legally allowed to host it, they will). However, with the COVID situation changing, we don’t want to collect entry fees, only to have to issue credits again, should things not be able to happen as planned. Therefore, we will continue to monitor the situation, and if the event appears to be possible, we will offer registration in a tighter window than usual.

We recognize that this is a possibility.  As with 2020, your health and safety are our top priorities.  We are planning for the events to occur in 2021, but will monitor the situation and act accordingly.  Since nothing is guaranteed, this is another reason why event credits were extended through 2022.