It’s time again to be thinking about our annual Holiday Dinner Party, this year scheduled for Saturday, December 8. Time to root around in the back of your closet to see if you have anything to wear besides bike clothes...something in fact a little bit dressy. For this is the one night all year when the Santa Rosa Cycling Club members get together—without a bike in sight—to act like normal people, or as close to that as we can get.
Look elsewhere in this issue for your reservation form. If you really want to be there, fill it out and send it in immediately. Seating is limited and reservations are taken in order of receipt. A $20 deposit is required to hold your place, but that will be returned to you when you check in at the dinner. Only no-shows forfeit their deposits.
For the most part, this Holiday Dinner follows the lead of others in recent years: it will be held at the Druids Hall in Santa Rosa, and the club will pick up the tab for the entire evening, except for the following items: while the dinner itself is catered—more about that later—the appetizer and dessert courses originate in the kitchens of our many members...pot luck, in other words. Also, there will be NO bar of any sort this year. The club will provide some non-alcoholic drinks on ice, but if you want your favorite tipple, beer or wine, you must bring it with you. The good news is that there is no corkage fee, so bring that special vintage and share it with your table mates.
As for the catered dinner, we have good news for you: the meal will be in the capable hands of Luca Pesce, proprietor of Riviera Restaurant in Santa Rosa. Luca catered our annual picnic in September, and the response to his wonderful Italian cuisine was so positive, we have arranged to have him prepare the Holiday Dinner for us as well. Read over the menu included in the reservation form: your hardest job might be trying to decide which of the four entrées to choose.
As always, the entertainment during and after dinner will be provided by the presentation of our annual awards. (See related article on awards elsewhere.) Donn King and Doug Simon are going to be the emcees for the festivities, and they promise to keep things hopping throughout the course of the evening. We look forward to sharing this fun-filled, food-filled evening with you.
If you look carefully, from November you can see all the way to the end of the year. It’s just ahead, over that next little hill. With that in mind, it’s time to trot out our annual reminders of things to do and things to think about, relative to the seasonal turnover...
• Annual Awards •
Note the article next door about the Holiday Dinner. A key component of that evening is the presentation of our annual, end-of-year awards. You know how it works: we distribute awards to various club members for deeds done over the course of the past year. Usually these are for great deeds, but occasionally they’re for goofs and gaffes and other cycling pratfalls.
Typically, the club’s Board makes a sincere, good-faith effort to come up with worthy winners for the assorted awards. But with over 600 members in the club now, it’s simply impossible for that small handful of officers to know who is doing what out there on all the different club rides. This is where you, the members, come in. You need to be our eyes and ears on the road. If you see someone who appears worthy of one of these awards, please bring it to our attention. Just a quick call or e-mail to any officer will focus the laser-like attention of the Board on the person in question, strongly tipping the odds in their favor. Help us out here, will ya?
To refresh your memory, here is a list of the more-or-less traditional awards we present each year (most of these have both male and female recipients, and some will have multiple winners as well):
Rookie of the Year (best new riders); Most Improved (one step up from Rookie); King and Queen of the Hill (best climbers); Comeback Kid (recovering from accidents or medical setbacks); Most Inspirational (any definition that fits); Volunteer of the Year; Leader of the Pack (contributions to cycling advocacy and politics); Lewis & Clark Award (for significant self-contained touring accomplishments); Ride Leader of the Year (most rides lead); Good Shepherd (most supportive ride leader); Golden Shoe (most supportive spouse); Rider of the Year (biggest dawgs on club rides); Gearhead Award (most impressive, epic cycling accomplishment of the year).
Think about each of these categories while out on rides this month. Think back over the year and see if any one of your friends fills the bill for any of these awards. Then pass that thought along to someone on the Board. They’ll do the rest.
Or, perhaps better yet, create a new award of your own to present to someone. This is where the gag and goof type awards often come in, but they can also be entirely serious and respectful. Almost every single award that we now consider traditional—from the Gearhead to the Good Shepherd to the Golden Shoe—began life as one of these grass roots expressions of appreciation...from one member to another. Perhaps the new award you introduce this year will be an old standard ten years from now.
• Executive Board Officers •
Each year we elect a new slate of officers to sit on the club’s Executive Board. These worthies meet once a month at a Board meeting and make the decisions that guide the club along its way.
Each year, many of those Board members choose to continue in their positions for another year, but almost always, a few will decide it’s time to step down and let someone else take a turn. And such is the case this year: we will have two or three openings for Officers-at-Large. Could one of these openings be a good fit for you?
The duties of Board members are not overly burdensome: attend one Board meeting and one General meeting each month. (Some absences are to be expected, but not too many.) Meetings generally run a couple of hours, which includes time for dinner (provided by the club). The President will work through an agenda of several items, generating varied amounts of discussion and sometimes calling for votes on the issues in question. Some are small matters and some are very significant for the future plans and policies of the club.
In some cases, officers will take on special tasks related to some topic under discussion—doing research or running errands—but such extra efforts are not required of the office.
In short, it’s an easy and enjoyable way to assist your club and to learn about and participate in the leadership of this organization. (All of the topics being discussed have something to do with cycling, and we all love talking about that, right?) If being a key player in the club appeals to you, and if you’d like to know more about what’s involved in this commitment, talk with any current member of the Board.
• New Years Party •
Sharron and Ron Bates and René Goncalves have hosted the club’s New Years Day ride and party for several years now. This year, they have decided to pass the party on to someone new. If you have attended one of these affairs in recent years, you know they have become quite the big production. In fact Sharron and René are victims of their own success: they did too good a job and they raised the bar, year by year, to the point where it was simply too much to take on again. They wore themselves out doing such a great job.
So they’re opting out. But that doesn’t mean anyone who agrees to host the party in future has to match the parties of years past. Our goal at this point is to dial back the entire production just a bit...not quite such a lavish spread of food and more of it pot luck and relaxed.
The club will list a set of ABC rides tailored to roll past your house around midday on New Years Day. If the weather cooperates, you might see as many as 50 or even 75 visitors over the course of two or three hours. The club will help with the supplies. The members will help with the pot luck. Most of what you need to provide is the site for the whole affair. If you’re interested, let us know. We’ll work with you to make it as easy as it can be...and as fun too.
Long-time club member Joe Morgan has agreed to act as Chair for the 2008 Wine Country Century. Joe has been a key player on many past WCC’s, working on a variety of tasks over the years. He knows the ropes, and now that he’s retired, feels he will have the time to commit to this all-important project. All Board members and concerned club members are breathing a great sigh of relief, knowing now that the event will be in such capable hands in the upcoming year.
Joe’s first official act as Chair is to convene the first WCC Committee Chairs Planning Meeting....
2008 WCC Planning Meeting Tuesday • November 6 6:00 PM • Round Table Pizza 6314 Commerce Blvd, Rohnert Park
Many topics relating to the event will be on the table for discussion, including potential issues with county planning and the CHP, entry fees, field limits, VIP passes, and all the usual logistical challenges that the event entails. If you’re a committee chair with suggestions on how to improve things in your department or at the century in general, you should be there.
Let Joe know you’ll be coming. Make a note of this contact info: you will be referring to it often in the months ahead... 778-8209 • themorganfamily@comcast.net
Chalk Hill Road Adopt-a-Backroad Litter Pick-up Day 9:00 AM • Sunday • November 11 San Miguel School (Faught Rd)
This should have been the date for our annual visit to our original adopted backroad: West Dry Creek. But it turns out the West Dry Creek Homeowners’ Association is doing their own litter day on Saturday, Nov 10. There would be no litter for us to pick up on the 11th. Next year, we hope to coordinate these litter pick-up days and do it as a joint effort...our club and their neighborhood association. But we didn’t get organized in time this year. So instead we will do our other adopted backroad: Chalk Hill. We missed it last spring because we were doing a special project on Bennett Valley in conjunction with the Tour of California, so it’s overdue for some attention.
Many hands make light work of this task...around 40 sets of hands would be just about right. Then we retire to a local bistro for lunch, courtesy of the club. To sign up, or for more information... Richard Stone—292-3006 stonebiker@sbcglobal.net
Have you surfed around the Santa Rosa Cycling Club’s website lately? If you haven’t, you should. It’s an attractive site, recently redesigned. It’s loaded with good information, and decorated with numerous photos of the lovely cycling back roads and scenery of the North Bay. If, for instance, you go to the archives for either past newsletters or past ride lists, you will find a handsome photo of some back road or some club ride embellishing the page for each month...a different one on every single page. It’s a challenge to see home many of the spots shown in the photos you can identify. And they keep changing...new photos of different roads or trails popping up all the time.
Who’s responsible for all the nice photos and the well-designed site? That would be our hard-working webmaster, Bill Osburn. Bill has been managing our club site (srcc.com) pretty much since we first put a page on the ’net...a long, long time. He has helped the site grow from next to nothing to its current state...a state which is as good as any bike club site you will ever find, anywhere, and considerably better than most of them. As is the case with most of our best club volunteers, Bill does what he does quietly, behind the scenes, without any fanfare and with little in the way of thanks.
Bill is just in the process of moving to Sacramento. He says he will keep doing the site from his new home. We hope that’s true. He would be hard to replace. But in case he does begin to slip away from us, you’d better check out the site while his excellent work is still on display. And thank him for all his work if you happen to see him.
First a small piece of business... The folks down in Oakmont have requested that we not use the little path from the end of Channel Drive that curls around behind their RV storage lot. They want us to stay on the main path that leads past the church to White Oak. This is what we already do 99% of the time, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to honor their request. Besides, the path around the RV storage lot is tight and tricky, which is of course why they don’t want bikes on it. Makes sense to me. By the way, we hear a rumor that the section of gravel off the end of Channel, heading to White Oak, might get paved. Just a rumor...no solid info.
Seems like each month lately we’re tipping the hat to some club members who have done great things in the ultra-cycling sphere. This month, the “Chapeau!” goes to the folks who knocked off the Furnace Creek 508 on the first weekend in October. Paul McKenzie was 8th overall and first in the 50+ division; Greg Lester was right behind him, second in 50+. Also completing this grueling ride: Bill Bradley of Santa Rosa. Bill is not an SRCC member, but we’ll give it up for the homeboy anyway. If you are a subscriber to the club’s chat list, you will have had the opportunity to read accounts of the event from Paul or his crew chief, Bill Ellis.
While we’re in this vein, let’s also salute some double century finishers. I went back and made another stab at slogging through the results for the Mt Tam Double back in August, and I could only identify three SRCCers who did it: Joe Morgan, Scot Castle, and Karen Thompson. (If I missed you, please let me know.) We had a bigger finishers list at the Knoxville Double on September 29: Ken Cabeen, Bill Carroll, Scot Castle, Greg Durbin, Mark Gunther, Tony Lee, Scott McEldowney, Joe Morgan, Georg Ockenfuss, Garth Powell, John Russell, and Karen Thompson. That’s in alpha order, as the results do not list finishing times. Perhaps they are right when they choose not to do so: off the front, mid-pack, or mopping up the rear, any finish in any double is a grand accomplishment, so all of you are winners in our book.
On the same weekend as the 508 festivities, we had our annual Wendy Page Memorial Grizzly Century Weekend. Kimberly Hoffman was again in charge of our club’s activities and reports that 22 clubsters signed up. A sudden and fairly severe cold snap rolled through the high Sierra on the Friday afternoon before the ride, dropping considerable rain at the lower elevations and snow and ice higher up. (I don’t know why this should be so surprising. October in the Sierra is always going to be a chancy adventure. It’s just that most of our past Grizzlies have been so pleasant and summer-like.) Driving toward Oakhurst that afternoon, we were treated to a lovely double rainbow with a backdrop of ridges flocked in fresh snow...lovely, but not really what you want to be seeing when you have a hard century on the card for the following day, right up amidst those snow-flocked ridges. We huddled around the campfire on Friday night, hoping for the best but fearing the worst before retiring to our chilly tents.
Fortunately for all the worried riders, the rain (and snow) had petered out by morning and we enjoyed a dry day throughout. It was cold though! (The hardest thing I did all day may have been climbing out of my sleeping bag to get dressed.) Rest stop workers told us it was down to 17° in the wee hours of the morning, and it was barely 30° when we rolled out at 8:00 am, after the traditional Grizzly breakfast. With four or five miles of wind-chilled downhills at the start, we were wickedly nipped about the extremities...exquisitely, intensely painful. But once we started the long, long climbs that make up most of the early going, it became tolerable and even borderline balmy, although most of us kept most of our cold-weather clothing on all day. For something like 30 miles during the middle of the ride—up at the highest elevations—we were riding through a winter wonderland, with snow blanketing all the meadows and forest floor alongside the road, although the road itself was clear and dry. It looked like a pretty Christmas card scene. Not that the Griz needs much help being pretty: it really is the most beautiful century around. Always a full helping of eye candy. The dire weather forecast prompted some in our group to modify their plans for the ride, but most who came to do the whole century did in fact get it done, although not on the regular course. With the snow and ice at the highest spots on the course, the organizers decided overnight to modify the route, so that it turned into a simple 52.5-mile out-&-back to the end of the pavement on the first road. I’m not sure how this avoided any more snow and ice than the regular route would have offered up. We still climbed up into that snow zone, and in the end, we had more elevation gain than we would have had on the normal loop. (I logged 105 miles and 11,500' of gain.) A few folks did the normal course, without support beyond the midpoint, but most of us stuck with Plan B. Having done the old course a few times, I took it as an opportunity to experience those early miles going the other way: all the climbs turned into descents and all the descents into climbs, and all the views seen from the other way around. It made it a very different and unexpected ride.
Once back to North Fork, we rolled down the hill to the big dinner feed...barbecued chicken, tri-tip, and ribs. After dinner, we gathered back at camp and had another pleasant evening around the campfire—much warmer than Friday night—complete with smores and wine and pleasant conversation. Ditto for breakfast on Sunday morning: nippy but sunny; a big fire to warm the tootsies, and plenty of hearty grub to pack away before the drive home. Thanks to Kimberly for putting all the pieces together.
Now then...back to the back yard rides we know and love so well. We left this endless chronicle one month ago with Wayne Kellam leading a ride out of Petaluma. We pick that theme up for the following week’s ride, with Tony Lee leading a ride out of Petaluma: Le Tour de Limantour. But that’s where the similarity ends, as Tony’s ride never happened. On the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox, when summer shades over into fall, we got our first hint of winter: an early rain front that killed the ride and denied us the opportunity to visit the distant Limantour Beach. Tony says he’ll relist in another month.
It was a brief bit of bad weather though, and the next day everyone who wanted to ride found a way to do so, some with improvised rides, solo or with pals, and some on Sue Bennett’s AB ride from Santa Rosa out to the smaller burgs of Cotati and Sebastopol. Sue sent in this note about her ride: “With a bit of a fall nip in the air, 15 riders left Howath Park. The moderate climb on Bennett Valley followed by the climb on Sonoma Mtn and Pressley warmed us. After a quick descent on Roberts and a jaunt on E. Cotati (aka Traffic Light Alley), we took a cruise through the south Sebastopol area and eventually made it to Coffee Catz. We sat and chatted on the patio for quite awhile, enjoying a picture-perfect fall day. From there, it was an easy ride back to Howarth via the Joe Rododa trail and Sonoma Avenue.”
A week later, Cotati was on the card again, as the start site for Rose Mello’s AB trek out to an even smaller town—Freestone—and a carbo-loading pit stop at the Wildflour Bakery. Rose reports: “Starting off I had to apologize to all the riders that the ride turned out to be 46 miles instead of 30. On the way out, we skipped doing Middle and on the way back we took Roblar. We ended up doing 40 miles. Everybody had a great time some of us took our time riding back.”
That same day—the last day of September—Doug McKenzie had a C ride tackling Sweetwater from the Hop Kiln side, with the steep little pitches on Green Valley and Harrison Grade thrown in for added spice. “About 20 riders showed up for this ride. Nice weather...a couple of flats and wrong turns which separated the group a bit. After a long, unplanned regroup and water stop at Armstrong Grove, we headed out to Occidental. We kept the pace high at the front and scattered the group a bit. A long break in Occidental to regroup and refuel brought most of us back together. It was a great day to be out with a great group.”
The first Saturday in October brought us the Grizzly Century. It also featured another Tom Helm pace line clinic and the latest edition of Doug McKenzie’s 2CCC ride (Two County Coastal Century). This ride kicked my keester last year, so I avoided it this year by going to the Griz. But Doug still had some company. “About 11 starters at Piner High. I think a lot of the century folks opted for the Griz. We picked up three or four more along the way to Occidental. We ended up riding with some Gianni boys who by chance were going the same way as us until Bay Hill. A couple peeled off at Bay Hill for the 55-miler. The remaining group stuck together well all the way to the coast. After a short regroup overlooking the ocean, we headed out to Tomales. We were still over 10 strong at Tomales, but there half decided to do the 75 and the rest of us headed down to Marshall. The weather was perfect and the group was well matched. Regroups at the top of climbs were only a couple minutes. We pacelined down the coast and into the wind on Chileno Valley. Deanna was at Bloomfield for our final refuel stop. I told her water and electrolytes will do, but she picked up some Halloween-size Snickers... irresistible at this point in the ride. We had one rider skip the wicked final ascent on Burnside and the four of us remaining split for our final destinations (Occidental, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa) after the summit. I ended up with 101 miles on the almost perfect day for cycling. I couldn’t ask for a better group and better weather for my birthday ride.”
Next up were the Second Saturday rides, staging out of Ragle Park in Sebastopol. All of the routes had been created by Rose Mello as a possible package for the picnic rides. But the traditional picnic rides had already been published in the August newsletter and so we held on to these routes for another date, and this was it. She did a nice job of stringing some old familiar roads together in new combinations that made things fresh. After raining steadily all day on Friday, it had cleared off overnight so that Saturday morning was bright and crisp and freshly scrubbed...the best sort of autumn day. Janice Oakly was the C leader, but there wasn’t a listed B leader, and it wasn’t quite clear—to me, anyway—who was on the B ride and who was on the C ride. Altogether, along with George Gallegos’ A riders, it made for a pretty big crowd in the parking lot at the start...maybe close to 50 people. But it all seemed to work out, in spite of at least one mass wrong turn early on. The hills—in this case, Graton and Green Valley—did their usual, efficient job of sorting the riders into smaller groups, so that the great mass of riders at the start was diced up into little clots of half a dozen each, with the occasional lone lost sheep in the gaps in between. I peeled off the route around mid-ride to gather up some extra miles, but Janice tells me that everything went smoothly over the balance of the ride.
On Sunday, Richard Stone lead a ride up around the usual Wine Country haunts...Alexander and Dry Creek Valleys. He sent in this note about the day: “We had 23 people show up, three of whom were from out of the area and were not familiar with the roads, so they required some special attention, which was okay. The spirit of the ride was quite enjoyable and overall was a darn good ride. Zero downside and excellent conditions plus, best of all: great people.”
We don’t do the Black and Blue Bottom awards anymore, but if we did, two worthy candidates would be Dennis Forer and Larry Wendt. Both have had fairly serious accidents. Back in mid-summer, Dennis hit a pot hole and did a front summy, landed on his head and broke a bone in his neck. This has resulted in the loss of some function in his right arm, which may or may not come back. More recently, Larry was tripped up by a not-to-code speed bump in Windsor and broke a collarbone, four ribs, and his pelvis. He’s still recovering. If you know these guys, give ’em a call. They could use some cheering up.
Last month we reported on several club members who had been fortunate enough to put together cycle-tour vacations in the Pyrenees this past summer. One of them was Craig Johnson, and he will be our featured speaker at the November meeting, sharing with us his photos from that grand adventure. If you can’t make the meeting or if you want a sneak preview of his pix, you can find them at this site: http://picasaweb.google.com/cjbigcog.
Finally, here’s a note from club member David Becker, who along with his wife, is doing a tour of duty in the Peace Corps in the Ukraine. This is almost a cycle-tour report, but a bit different: “We do have wonderful roads here: outside of the city traffic is minimal, road surface is okay, slurry seal at times, pot-holes at others. Gorgeous vistas of rolling hills, golden onion domes poking out of the forest...and peasants. Peasants, just like I have read about in so many Russian novels. You should see some of the faces and the hands, history written in time worn hands. I am living in a Russian novel. Wonderful. Interestingly I got hooked up with the local masters champ. Like Dave Walters, he is a shop owner and races on the side. Me with my town bike...heavy, thick tires just lacking fenders but I have a bell! At least I have a bell. Bike envy is alive and well here in the Ukraine. You can never have too many bikes. Fun in the Ukrainian sun, anticipating winter. Brrrrr.”
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