• Check-in with ALC
• Drop off your bike
• View safety video
• Sign medical forms
• Complete donation
• Find tent mate

Tip: Make sure you print out the e-ticket that is offered on the main page. Getting to the Palace without will make your life more complicated.

Check-in

The check-in process will match you up with your number, will get you signed off on a master roll, and will get you an envelope with incredibly important contents:

• a map of the day in five easy steps
• a wrist band with your participant number and an emergency phone number
• a sticker to be placed on the left side of your helmet (so security has an easier time tracking you down)
• a sticker for your bike - of vital importance, because it allows you to park your bike in ALC spaces, and because it will get scanned at the end of the day to ensure everybody is accounted for)

Drop-off

Next, you'll apply the sticker to your bike and drop it off in the first of a hundred bike parking areas you'll see over the next week. That's a bunch of wooden triangles that support a bunch of pipes. You are to place the saddle/seat on the pipe, so that the bike is suspended.

Make sure you remember where you left your bike, because you are the only person that will be able to find it come next morning! Write down where you left it (the areas have numbers to identify them).

Safety Video

Once you drop off the bike, your next step (according to the chart) is the safety video. THEORETICALLY, all the other steps depend on this one. Since the video is offered only once every 30 minutes, though, and since you can't join the ride without the wrist band that comes with the video, you can fulfill the other requirements first. As long as you remember to watch. Because, really, without the wrist band you can't go on the ride. Really.

The actors in the video are real people: volunteers, police staff, medical staff. I know that for sure because they are so stiff and uncomfortable in their delivery, they would have never been put in those places otherwise. The unfortunate side effect is that the whole video is dull and turns you off almost instantly. Even the two leaders of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, great guys and incredible organizers, really don't show their best side as public speakers.

Fortunately, there is the CEO of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center. She should have her own show on Comedy Channel, and she comes to the rescue at the end of the video, getting you out of the coma of the past dullness. Note: staff knows very well how boring the video is, since they threaten everybody with a repeat viewing if you lose your security video wrist band. You lose it, you watch it again.

Sign Medical Forms

One of the things that ALC is amazingly good about is medical preparedness. Every stop has medical staff on hand, there are several ambulances that run with the team, there are even massage tables and chiropractors all over the place.

It is not surprising you have to fill out a form that asks about pre-existing conditions. That's not as much because of coverage, but because the ridership is so varied, medical staff needs current information about you. Remember: there are lots of people that have never really been active, as well as plenty of HIV positive riders in all stages of infection.

Please take that form seriously and come prepared: fill it out online if you can, and come with the names and numbers of your primary care physician if you can't get to the online form.

Complete Donation

If you didn't manage to get all your money in and didn't already sign a pledge, you will be asked to do so now. That means you will have to fork over the missing money, typically with a credit card. If your donation is all done, skip this step entirely (your e-ticket will say so).

Get a Tent Assignment

Three options:

1. You already have a tent mate, and both of you met the (invisible and unannounced) funding deadline - you can apply for tent-mate-ship online and don't have to go through this process
2. You have a tent mate, but you didn't sign up online. In this case, you both have to show up before the ALC volunteer, who will assign you a tent right then and there.
3. You don't have a tent mate. One will be randomly assigned to you. Don't even begin to hope you might get lucky and be in a tent by yourself: if there is another person without a tent mate, you'll end up in their tent.

As far as the choice of tent locations: go for the lowest letter first, which means line up at the far left (letter A), and go for the "lowest" number, which is the numbers closest to 01 and 99. That's because A01 is the reference point staked out first, and it's usually closest to everything. If your tent is K50, it's most likely to be in the least desireable spot: close to the freeway, the latrines, and farthest from the showers and breakfast.

Groups of people can ask for tents close to each other. Volunteers are typically pretty nice and accommodating.