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| Cycling the GTA since 1972, you are welcomed to join us |
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| Welcome Remarks | |
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From the President - Bob Beale From the VP Touring - Andy Mallinson President Welcome to the 2009 riding season. As your new president, I will do my best to help make this a great year for the club. The Executive has plans to grow the club and enhance our profile in the community and as always we open to hear from club members with your ideas and suggestions. As you probably know, we had no one elected to the position of VP of Racing this year. As a result, we have reduced our racing program to ten time trials and eliminated the points series and trophies. The executive will run the racing, but we still need volunteers to assist with the races. The club is open to expanding the racing program; we just need someone to lead the charge. Your Executive has plunged into the quagmire known as “Changing the club jersey”. In doing so, we have realized that we need more of a consensus from within the club. Therefore we will have a contest to choose a new jersey design – rules to be announced shortly. The best designs will be presented at the end of season banquet and the winner declared by a vote. Perhaps someone will volunteer to present a compelling pitch for the present jersey. Until we get a new design, we will continue to offer the present jersey and shorts from Louis Garneau. We are planning to include rides with other clubs in our schedule, through a sharing of rides. We will invite local clubs to our turf to take them on one of our favourite rides and in turn visit their locale for one of their favourite rides. This is a great way for the club to engage the cycling community and see new faces and routes. Andy Mallinson, our tireless VP of touring has coordinated a couple of new efforts this year. One is present some educational material on the website regarding roles and responsibilities for touring riders and ride leaders. The second is new to this club; a free (BCC riders) rider skills clinic on May 17 run by Chris Lightbound. I encourage riders to take advantage of this opportunity to increase your skills and make rides more enjoyable. As usual, we have the same people showing up to volunteer for club functions and we’re most appreciative. We need some fresh blood to help with a number of ventures such as revising the club brochure, running a ride share program for club members in the city who need a ride to our touring events, maybe even organizing our volunteers. Don’t be afraid to put your hand up to make a contribution. Let us know your ideas about how to increase volunteer participation. On behalf of the Executive, let me wish you and your families the best for 2009. And remember when things get bad in the economy, it just means you have more time to get out on your bike. Bob Beale. President
VP Touring Well, it’s officially Spring and the 2009 season is here. Thankfully, we can at last put away the wretched trainer for another year and get on with some proper outdoor riding. As many of you will have seen, the touring schedule for the year is now up on the website. The program is generally similar to last season and features our Eden Mills and El Dorado Park picnics, both of which remain free to club members. The excellent Niagara rides are on again for September too. I am pleased to say that we have had several new volunteers step forward this year as tour leaders and I would like to thank them, and our more established leaders, for their invaluable support as without them our club would not be able to function. On May 17 we will be running a road safety and riding skills course in the Meadowvale GO parking lot. We still need volunteers to help make this happen so please check out my post on the forum and get in touch if you can help. There is a small but significant change in the clubs insurance coverage that I would like to bring to your attention. We are now allowed to have non-BCC members on our rides provided that they show a valid OCA insurance card from another OCA affiliated club and that there is a strict limit of 3 rides per year for such participants before they are required to join the BCC to continue. If you have not yet renewed your own membership and do not already have insurance from another OCA club please make sure that you take care of this before you join in any of our rides as to do otherwise is not fair to those who have renewed and also jeopardises our coverage. Steve Maxwell has done an excellent job over the winter months of revamping our website and giving it a bright, modern look. Over the next few weeks or so there will be some significant changes to the touring section of the website. The changes are firstly aimed at making it easier for prospective new members to learn about our club and understand where they might best fit in. Secondly, following on from comments received last year both from tour leaders and from regular riders, we will be setting out more clearly some of the expectations and requirements that are incumbent on those participating in any of our activities. There will be a further notification sent to all members when these changes are implemented and I hope that you will all take a little time to familiarise yourselves with the new content. Finally, I wish everyone an enjoyable & a safe riding season. Andy Mallinson. VP Touring |
| Site designed and maintained by Steve Maxwell 2009 Brampton Cycling Club |