By Allan Edmonds
Club members declared March 7 the First Day of Spring. March 7 marked not only the first official ride of the 2009 ride calendar. It also marked our annual meeting and party. This year we had an elegant buffet dinner at Chapman’s Restaurant in Bloomington. Social chair Autumn McCoy did all the organizing for a wonderful event. The menu included green salad, melons and grapes, a sliced tomato-parmesan dish, steamed vegetables, rice, vegetarian lasagna, baked fish, baked chicken, and dinner rolls. Dessert included lemon custard, chocolate mousse, apple pie, and coffee. All food was paid for by the club. A cash bar was available. There were about 80 or so club members, including family and guests. A nice time was had by all.
After dinner, club co-president Mark Napier presided over a brief, formal business meeting, in which the club approved a small change to the by-laws that will follow recent practice to allow club officers to live “near Bloomington,” replacing the former requirement that they live “in the city of Bloomington.” Officers for the coming year were also elected. Keith Bobay presented a slate of officers on behalf of the nominating committee. Mark Napier and Jennifer Miers were re-elected co-presidents, Tom Whitehead was elected vice-president, and Joe Anderson was re-elected treasurer, and Keith Bobay was re-elected as secretary. Keith also presented two new committee chairs: (1) Sandi Owen, who will take over as Membership Chair, as Jim Lang devotes his time to upgrading our computerized budget and accounting system to QuickBooks. And (2) Jim Schroeder, who will head up a project to update our collection of route maps.
Mark introduced many of the continuing committee chairs, each of whom spoke briefly about their activities on behalf of the club.
Co-president Jennifer Miers talked about Adopt-a-Road. Our section of road is a one-mile stretch of Old 37, just south of where Old 37 crosses State Road 37 heading toward Harrodsburg, see the map. Dates for this year’s four clean up days are on the club calendar. People should contact Jennifer ahead of time if they plan to help so that she can be sure there are sufficient reflective vests and gloves to go around. Besides being a good public service, this is a good way to help drivers appreciate cyclists more. There are signs at both ends of our mile stretch that announce that the BBC has adopted this section of road.
Tour Director Mike Finger talked about the ride calendar and being a ride leader. A group of ten or so club members responded to Mike’s invitation a few weeks ago to gather and put together the main Saturday ride calendar for the upcoming season. Pictures taken at the meeting by Klaus Rothe can be viewed here. Rides were selected and ride leaders were recruited. More ride leaders are still needed, especially for rides in the second half of the season. Mark chimed in with a plug for the idea of co-ride leaders. When we have large groups it’s too difficult for one person to keep track of everyone. It’s an easy way to get a feel for what’s involved with being a ride leader to volunteer to assist and experienced ride leader. Typically, one person leads out and shows the way, while the other keeps an eye on the tail of the group being sure no one gets dropped or lost or accidentally left to fend for themselves. In general all club members have a shared responsibility to help be sure no one falls behind or otherwise has trouble. So keep an eye on those near you, and offer a helping hand where it might be needed.
Outgoing Membership chair Jim Lang announced that we now have 188 members, and that memberships can now be paid on-line through a secure credit card payment link.. Just go to the Membership Page of the club web site to renew, if you haven’t already done so. Note that your credit card statement will show this as a payment to RAIN. (The club is saving money by piggy-backing on the system set up for RAIN registration.) The current membership roster can always be viewed in the private area of the club web site. Jim was accepting membership renewals at the meeting. Reminder: club memberships expire each year on May 31. Here’s a photo of club member Dave Tanner renewing his membership for 2009. 
Klaus Rothe talked about the new web site he is designing for the club, which he hopes will go live in the next month or so. It will have an up-to-date, visual focus. For those who can’t wait, a preliminary mock-up of the new home page can be seen at this page. Many changes are still being made, but you can get a rough idea of what to expect here. By the way, for those interested Klaus uploaded some of the photos he took at the party to BBC Banquet. (The second and fourth photos in this story came from Klaus.)
Advocacy chair Keith Vogelsang talked about his role keeping an eye out for issues and being a general gadfly. Keith’s comments provoked a brief discussion from the floor about the developing B-Line Trail. It is a multi-use trail. Bicyclists may use it to get from one place to the other, sharing it with walkers, runners, skateboarders, etc., but it won’t substitute for our regular road cycling. Keith specifically asked club members to keep him informed about issues they hear about related to bicycling. Cathy Meyer, chair of Safety and Education (which overlaps a bit with Advocacy), chimed in with a call for some new committee members. Their activities involve such things as requests for assistance and kid’s bike rodeos and being a presence at other events where they can hand out safety literature.
Allan Edmonds talked about the OWLS (Older or Wiser or a Little Slower) riding group and encouraged people to come out for their moderate training rides on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 5:45 pm, starting in April, and typically go around 25 +/- miles in a couple of hours. See the on-line ride calendar for more details. Those who have never been on an OWLS ride but might be interested can get a sense of them from a series of OWLS ride reports Allan put together last summer. This year we’ll have the rides on the club calendar. CE Taylor is helping out planning rides for this season.
Allan also talked about this new BBC Blog that is replacing our sometime newsletters. Articles will be published here as they come in, with brief announcements being sent to the club by email. Ride reports and articles of general interest should be sent to him by email. Contributions from club members will be important in making this a successful venture. So take up the challenge of sharing your thoughts and ideas with club. Use the email address blogger@bloomingtonbicycleclub.org to submit articles.
In the absence of RAIN Director Joe Anderson, Mark discussed plans for RAIN 2009 and the importance of club members helping out as volunteers, both on the day of the event (July 18) and in getting things organized in the weeks ahead of that time.
Jennifer Smallwood, chair of the grant committee, talked about this year’s grant process. Grant recipients who were present were introduced and the others were mentioned. In particular Madi Hirschland of Earth Care Bloomington talked about the group she represents and their program of encouraging bicycle racks at area religious organizations. She showed a poster advertising Walbicus—Walk Bike Carpool or Bus to Worship weekends — scheduled for 2009. Here is photo taken by Klaus. 
Click here to see a copy of the poster.
After all the business and reports were completed, Norm Houze presented a program on deCycles, including a 45-minute video documentary on their 2008 trip, three weeks in the Southwest, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. The 2009 trip is already completely filled. It will be a three-week round trip from Bloomington, called Appalachian Mountains 2009, riding south to the Smokys, then along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and back home via West Virginia. Check out the deCycles website for the full story of last year’s trip and to follow day by day accounts of the 2009 trip. Norm invited all club members to come out as a bicycling escort when the group leaves Bloomington on June 20. More details on that will be available later.
After the program many members and guests continued to chat informally for a while before heading out. We hope not too many people forgot to reset their clocks for Daylight Savings Time when they got home!