[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I just cannot believe that I am old enough to say "I can remember when" but > I can. Billings is central and close. Raods access is great. Streets and > "car free" compared to when "I was young". > > I started riding as a week teen with a bunch of old guys/(younger) girls in > Toronto on Tuesday and Thursday night. The meeting place was 10 miles (yes > miles) from home and we then traveled 60 miles on Tuesday and 80 miles on > Thursday nights farther away from home. Same route every weak. I think it > is now called the donut ride. We picked up people along the way. The > double pace line was sometimes 20-40 people long sometimes much longer. > This is great if you like to suck wheels and chat. It also gives you great > power over cars. No one is going to get out and get mad if there are 40 > people on the other team. Round trip of these rides became 80 and 100 > miles. I slept well, often in my shorts. I was so tired I dropped out of > gym. > > On weekends a few of us 20-30 would go for shorter rides in town, 40 miles > of stop lights,double parked cars, six lane left hand turns. This is a > great way to learn bike skills, and to some degree I loved it. > > When I moved to Ottawa in 1983 Billings Bridge was the meeting place. > People often complained about how far they had to ride to get to Billings > and how far they had to ride to get out of town. I just laughed. We should > be thankfull that we choose to live in a town with 2-4 lane roads where the > park and country are so close. The only down side is the lack of traffic > skills that we have. My skills suck in comparison to when I lived in TO. I > no longer feel comfortable hitting my elbows on the hydro poles located on > the edge of Bank Street south of Sunnyside. This use to be great fun > > But, I am getting old. > > Ross D. Knight
I too will vote for a central starting point. I only live 9 km from Billings Bridge, but personally would have no problem riding 20 km or so to a start. I hate starting off by car (in fact I've never driven to Billings or RLCT, I've once taken a lift to a remote start, I've cycled to several, but I have driven to time trials) - by the time you've loaded and unloaded it's about equal time to ride or drive to a start point 30 km away - and there's always the risk of forgetting something when you start by car. You also lose all those km(!), and the warm-up ride. But looking at the bigger picture, the further out the start point is moved, the less that people will want to, or be able to, ride there. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement. What might be worth trying, based on the fact that we have only a few standard routes out of town, is identifying formal pick-up points - eg Manotick, somewhere on Hunt Club Road (Moodie?), etc, that members in those areas could join rides at. I also don't see the typical ride out of town as a difficult ride. On Sundays very few of the routes we use are busy, and just about all those that are busy have 4 lanes, where it is much easier to manage the interaction between traffic and groups. Like Ross I started club riding as a teenager (I had just turned 13 - how many unaccompanied 13-year olds does the Club have?). It was also 10 mile ride to our start point - and just about always into a westerly wind. Our Sunday rides were from 40 miles in the winter up to 100 miles in the summer. The club was very quick to appoint younger members to the board - at times there were 3 teens or near-teens out of about 8 - and to encourage them to take on major responsibilities. I was the equivalent of Touring Director by age 16 or 17. This made it much easier to encourage more potential young members, and many of the riders who joined the club in their teens at that time are still regular riders. Ross also makes an interesting point about traffic skills. One only realizes how easy cycling (and driving) is here when one goes somewhere else where the lanes are really narrow, where the curbs are high, where there are lots of potholes, and where the delays at lights typically last through several cycles so that other road-users are really impatient, not just putting on a show.... -- Peter James Ottawa, Ontario ------ Club Office: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (613) 230-1064 Web/mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb Newsletter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb/Newsletter ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiDo.a2i8p1 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
