Magnificent or Mundane May Rides!

[ny biker]

Crankin, re: announcing canceled rides -- I have a tale of two clubs. One club posts ride news (cancellations and other important announcements) right on their website's main page, and again on the top of the page that shows the ride schedule for the month. Anyone who views the website can see the ride updates; you do not have to be a member and you do not have to be logged in. There is also a voluntary yahoo group for members only, and most ride updates are also sent there.

The other club has a forum section on their website, and ride updates are supposed to be posted there. You need to drill down a couple of links to find the page with the ride news. Also you have to be a club member and be logged into the website in order to see it. There is also an unofficial gmail listserv that was started by people who did not want anyone to moderate what they say. It is not publicized and you only know it exists if you overhear someone talking about it. Most ride leaders post their ride updates to the secret unofficial gmail list.

The first club is friendly and welcoming to new members. The second club is neither. I recommend taking an approach like the first club -- keep things simple and obvious to anyone who might show up for a ride.

(Okay yes I am ticked off at the second club and recently decided not to renew my membership with them, so that was a bit of a rant. I actually did a ride with them yesterday. I emailed the leader on Saturday with a question about the ride start location. It turned out that the actual start location was several blocks away from the address posted on the schedule. The ride leader said she would make sure to send an email to the secret gmail listserv to make sure everyone was aware of this. I pointed out that not everyone knew about the secret gmail listserv, but she didn't seem to care about that. Many people went to the wrong location as a result.)

I rode 46 miles yesterday. The weather was perfect. I guess I've been doing some pretty flat rides lately, because my pace was slow yesterday and I thought there was a lot of climbing, but when I plotted the route on ridewithgps.com, it was not really all that hilly. We were in an area of Virginia that I don't often visit. Some of the roads were very nice, quiet lanes with no traffic. Then there were the parts on roads with a speed limit of 55 mph, one lane in each direction and no shoulder. After the ride I visited a friend who is in the hospital, then went home, ate lots of food and called my mother.

[emily_in_nc]

I did blog post about our long ride on Saturday. It's here if anyone is interested:

http://travelingtwosome.weebly.com/1...to-kansas.html

Didn't ride today due to off and on rain, lots of wind, and way too much to do. We're moving out of the house we've been renting in Prairie Village, KS on Wednesday so are busy busy busy. We did get a LOT done today, though, so we think we'll have time to ride tomorrow and take our cable modem back to Time-Warner Cable when disconnecting our service. Since we'll be doing an errand we can justify a ride too!