We’ve been targeting the week of May 30-June 5, 2010. This morning I received a phone call from Simcoe County, where they expressed an interest in helping us to make this a County Wide Bike Safety Week!

Initial plans are for a ‘car free’ day in downtown Barrie on Sunday, May 30, and an official ride to work/school day on Weds, June 2.

If you are an employer in the region, or if you are employed in the region, please let us know if your company is willing to sign on as a community partner. Ideally we’d like them to support the bike to school day on Weds, by potentially allowing parents to arrive late, on bicycles after they’ve ridden their children to school.
If you can help out, or want to join onboard, please contact me via email. My email address is robb at barrie cycling dot com.

Thanks!

I haven’t made an update here since last year? Well, LOTS has been going on. I guess it’s time for an update.

Our 2010 OCA affiliation forms have been filled out and submitted, this means we will have membership cards in hand very soon. We also will provide all the local shops with forms & some club brochures in the next couple of weeks.

We have a whole bunch of great things that are set for the year ahead.

Saturday, May 22, we’ll be hosting an OCA Youth Cup Road Race & TT for riders ages 10-16. More info on the series is available on the OCA Website.

We will of course be participating in the Interclub road race series as we always have, however this year instead of Owen Sound being the third club, our friends from the Mountainview Cycling Club of Midland will join ourselves & the Newmarket Eagles in the series. The schedule is close to complete, and will be posted this week.

Mike Doble has again volunteered to run the club Time Trial series on alternate Thursdays through the summer, we’re very lucky to have his help!

We have joined a coalition along with the OPP, the County of Simcoe, the towns of Oro-Medonte, Innisfil, Springwater, Vespra & the Blue Mountains to create a rural road safety initiative/education program. After just two meetings a lot of progress has been made. The County has agreed to add a 1m strip of pavement to all new construction and re-pave jobs from herein. Oro-Medonte has agreed to something similar, but with the upcoming Pan-Am games, there is also potential to create an actual network of cycling routes through the area.

We have volunteered to adopt a section of Ridge Rd. The County responded to our request by granting us the section from Range Rd, through the town of Shanty Bay to the 3rd line of Oro. Our responsibility is to spend two days per year cleaning the shoulders of that section of litter & debris. For this, we get a sign along the side of Ridge Road with the Club’s name on it!

We’ve been hard at work to put together a program of rides designed to appeal to people who just like to ride bikes, as opposed to the ‘cyclist’ style rides we’ve typically focussed on.
These rides will be taking place every Saturday through the summer, and we’re really excited to teach new people what it’s like to change a tire, or ride in a group properly!

Hopefully some of the riders who attend these new Saturday rides will aspire to ride in our Charity event for the Barrie M.S. Society on Sunday September 18th. This will be a fully supported, exciting ride of multiple distances up to a full Imperial Century, or 160km! We’re really excited to showcase some of the challenging and picturesque terrain in our backyard.

I am sure that I’ve forgotten some things, but the gold medal game is almost on! I can’t believe it’s been so long since an update went out, apologies for that, but the Barrie Cycling Club is looking for 2010 to be the best year yet!

One last thing. We never had an end of year dinner last year, so I think perhaps a club meeting/pizza night is in order for this month, does this sound like a good idea?

Based on indicated support, a meeting of initial stakeholders to promote rural road safety will be held on Monday, December 14th at 1 p.m. The OPP has kindly offered the use of its boardroom at the Barrie detachment headquarters.

This will be a brainstorming session to begin the process of establishing programs that can be used to educate motorists and groups such as cyclists, equestrians, farm equipment operators, and pedestrians on safe practices when encountering one another on our roads.

Several groups have already expressed interest in participating in this process including the OPP, the towns of Oro-Medonte & Innisfil, The Town of the Blue Mountains, the Share the Road Coalition, the Ontario Equestrian Federation, the Ontario Trails Council, the Ontario Trail Riding Association, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Barrie Cycling Club.

During the process we may identify additional stakeholder groups locally and throughout the province who share our common vision of improved public safety on our rural roads. From our preliminary discussions you have already suggested and pointed to other programs that we may be able to connect with to advance our mutual interests. It would be helpful if you could bring information on these programs to the meeting.

Please contact me ASAP if you are interested in attending and if there are any other organizations that could also benefit by being in attendance.

Cheers,
robb