By Catherine Kitchell
Many of you have already checked it out, but the new PPTC website went up March 1st – if you haven’t seen it, please go to http://www.bikepptc.org and see for yourself. It’s slick and neat and a great round of applause goes to Marc Currie, Steve Wartik and past Executive Committees and Website Committees over many years for all the hard work and dedication that went into it. Many thanks also go to Steve Palincsar for his dedication to developing the old website and his input into the new site. Also, please thank Sherri Core, our staff person, for living through the transition. Some aspects of things like credit card processing one would believe should be easier if they are automated but sometimes a lot more goes on in the background than one would think. Hopefully, all that extra work will be alleviated soon.
There will be a second phase to the new website and that is creating a new system for scheduling rides. Currently rides are scheduled through our ride coordinators who usually send out emails to their usual ride leaders. Coordinators then send the schedule for their geographic area and class to Dan Lehman and Joe Stusnick who work some kind of magic to make the schedule as it appears in Pedal Patter. Coordinators really do a great job making sure, to the best of their ability, that there is at least one ride in every category in every geographic area both days of the weekend. People still like to get Pedal Patter and the first evolution of the new ride scheduling system will be tied to Pedal Patter deadlines. The downside of the system is that often ride leaders are committing to rides 6 weeks or more in advance and it’s hard, in the current system, to get in more “impromptu” rides if the weather should be unexpectedly beautiful or even to cancel rides if the weather is bad. The Executive Committee is aware of these issues and welcomes your comments on how the process will work. We are also hoping to develop some online forums to help with these issues. Please email me at ckitchell@earthlink.net with your concerns and comments as it is important that we hear from a variety of people in the club. The Ex Com has authorized the Website Committee to spend up to $30,000 working with the developer to get this accomplished and we want to know that club dues and money are well-spent getting members what they want.
In other great news, Tom Humphrey has taken over as editor of Pedal Patter. Tom has a degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland and over 15 years of writing and editorial experience. He completed his first century last October at the Seagull Century and he’s a B class rider. Tom can be reached at KiteFencer@comcast.net – please send story ideas to him. Also in PP news, Teresa Noonan is now writing the “Out of Bounds” column – taking it over this year from Chris Moriarity. If you know of out-of-town events that are really great and in the mid-Atlantic area Teresa will be happy to see if the meet the column’s guidelines for inclusion.
Please join everyone for the Volunteer’s Party/Ride Leaders meeting in Fairlington on April 14th. Barbara Binder has ordered up a great selection of food but please bring other items to share. The club will provide the plates, napkins, beer, wine, etc. also. We haven’t had a real party since the Annual Meeting so it’s a great time to see if you recognize people when they aren’t in spandex. You’d be surprised how many members clean up very nicely indeed! It’ll mostly be a party but if you are interested in the nuts and bolts of how to lead rides we’ll address the issues at the event. Again, we are working on building a new ride schedule program this year so this is the year to get involved with that process. If you constantly think “You know I’d like more rides that start earlier or are slower or more social or take place in Manassas during the week, etc.” chances are that someone else in the club thinks the same way and the best way to meet that need is to lead the ride and see who else comes out. Most of the really fast riders don’t need more motivation – they are really fast for a reason – usually they are highly motivated – but the rest of us could always use help and leading rides is the best motivator there is.
Please also check out our schedule of other events for the year on the back page of Pedal Patter. All our weekends are planned and the Nokesville picnic is May 6th. Most of the weekends are already up on the website so you can begin to sign-up.
Just a few more weeks until the Tuesday night rides on the Capital Crescent from Bethesda start up. Thank you Patrice Coss for those – a real harbinger of spring!