Year in Review 2022
Steve Saxe, President

Good evening, and welcome to SRCC’s 2022 Holiday Party! I’m Steve Saxe, which should be obvious from the program listing, and I’m charged with The Year in Review. I don’t think we need to put too fine a point on it: SRCC. Had. A. Fantastic. Year. Thank you. Good night! Nah, no such luck, I’m up here until past your bedtime! Which for some of you might be coming up pretty quick…

Here are the highlights:

• Ride Program. Our ride program, the core of the Club, is going gangbusters. Over forty scheduled rides every month, new groups riding on Tuesdays and Thursdays, new Ride Leaders, and a Ride Director who never sleeps. You know what I tell people I want to impress? “SRCC has over 1,000 members and more than 40 scheduled rides every month.”
• Wine Country Century. The 2022 WCC was a smash hit. Sold out by the end of March, over 2,500 registered riders, truly excellent rider survey ratings, and very satisfying financial results. •
• Warehouse. The SRCC Warehouse Team has developed the facility into a model of efficiency and utility. It supports not just our events including the WCC and TT, but cycling and charity events all over the North Bay, all free of charge.
• Charitable Contributions. We fully restored and even increased the club’s charitable contributions to SCBC and our community through contributions and Members’ Choice Donations.
• Club Activities. We’re back to “normal.” We’ve held regular monthly Member Meetings with interesting programs and guests, restarted our Education classes and clinics, held March Magic and April Alpina, had our regular NYD Brunch and Summer Picnic events.
• Insurance Settlement. The Club received a partial settlement from PG&E for our losses in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. We are using those unbudgeted funds to build reserves that we will use to help any local organization or club that has a similar catastrophic loss, and we are also returning a significant portion to those clubs and organizations that so generously helped us restock and rebuild after the Tubbs Fire.

All in all, a fantastic year. Last year on this stage, I outlined some goals for 2022 and, looking back, we accomplished many of those, but we still have opportunities to do even better.

• Redesign the Website. We are still wanting to redesign the club website to make it easier, simpler, more appealing, and more useful for members and visitors.
• Club Newsletter. We’re still working on how to develop a regular newsletter (not too frequent!) that would include more club news and a broader range of topics of interest to cyclists, educational content, guest editorials, etc.
• Increase Member Engagement. You knew this was coming. As President, I am morally, ethically, and legally bound to appeal you for more of this and more of that. But I won’t tonight. Tonight, I want you to reflect on and enjoy what you have given to the Club, and what the Club has returned to you. I hope you find that balance favorable.

I want to close by recognizing some members who made exceptional contributions to the Club in 2022. To be sure, SRCC is an all-Volunteer organization, and it doesn’t exist, much less thrive, without the commitment and generosity of literally hundreds of members. It’s no easy task to identify those that stand out, but I'll take the heat for making my picks. A few words about these gifts. They may look like wine bottles, but I stumbled over these absolutely delicious and nutritious snack bars from OffTheFarm on a ride to Napa a few weeks ago. They’re from a boutique maker in Redding, who it turns out also has a great website, easy online ordering, and first-rate customer service. So these are variety packs from OffTheFarm.com in Redding. I hope the recipients enjoy them but, if not, then they make great giveaways on rides.

Now, on to the honorees.

First, it’s critical to understand that SRCC does not function without its beating heart – the Club Warehouse. Doug Simon is the nerve center of that beating heart, but Doug is modest and doesn’t like to be called out. So when you see him, just throw in a casual “Hey, thanks for all you do.” He’ll get the message.

Doug nominated two key people on the Warehouse Crew for recognition this year, and I’d like to honor them now. There are two, and I’ll ask them to come up together. 

• The first is a guy who never says no when asked to help, who went above and beyond, and who stepped in to lead and finish some critical projects at the warehouse this year. Our 2022 Warehouse MVP is Don Billing. 
• The second is a rookie on the warehouse team, but his exceptional dedication and major contributions warrant this honor. Our 2022 Warehouse Rookie of the Year is Patrick Stites. Guys, come on up.
• Next, I’d like to recognize the guy who tirelessly, doggedly, and against astonishing bureaucratic resistance, pursued and obtained the partial settlement from PG&E. He started this work while still a board member and, three years of poking and pushing and hectoring later, finally coaxed a handsome check out of PG&E. Oh, and he has a day job, too. Ladies and gentlemen, Rainmaker Phil Welch!
• Next, and I preface this by saying that we have dozens of exceptional Ride Leaders, I would like to honor a guy who did just a little more than one would expect. The Club has longstanding rides on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, so long that they now have pet names – Tailwinds, Team Wednesday, Friendly Friday, Church of the Bicycle, to name a few. Tuesday and Thursday didn’t much appear on the radar, and we knew from experience that starting rides on new days of the week would take time, commitment, and persistence to build ridership and make them work. This guy made them happen, starting with sometimes as few as one or two riders and, week after week, just keeping to the schedule. He has now built Tuesday-Thursday ridership as strong as any other day of the week. Ladies and gentlemen, 2022 Ride Leader Extraordinaire Ed Estrada.

Finally, I want to express my personal gratitude to our tireless Ride Director, who is also a bottomless source of knowledge about the club (and a great many other matters) and a great help to me almost every day: Bridgette DeShields.

And now, please express your appreciation for this year’s Holiday Party Ringleaders Patty Graham and Cindy Dawson! Enjoy the rest of your evening and the joy of the season.