The passing of the shorted day (longest night) is a yearly ‘watershed’ for me, as I know the dark parts of my rides will get shorter. The downside is that it stays cold here for another two months, although I can’t imagine it will get much colder than that last week or so. The recent rain and subsequent floods have stymied quite a bit of riding, in particular the Manawatu School Champs. These have been postponed until the 16th of August. Those of you competing or interested in helping/watching, stay tuned to Facebook (Manawatu Schools Cycling) for updates and details. Again much thanks goes to Mike Simpson and his team for putting this and other School events together on a regular basis.
One thing the Schools Cycling group have done well is their traffic management. Kudos goes to Mike Groube for his expertise and experience here. With the new Health and Safety legislation, councils are going to take a closer look at what we do, even if we are volunteers and it’s not our workplace. That means having appropriate traffic management in place for our events, which in turn means that more volunteers are needed to run successful and safe events.
Gabrielle and the others on the Events Group have put together a great road calendar for the rest of the year. We are going to need people to agree to help out for the above reasons. So, if myself, Gabrielle, or one of the Board members asks for help to run a race or stand on a corner, a positive response would be appreciated. We will be particularly asking that everyone who races helps out at least once.
Christine Christie has been working very hard on improving the value of Bike Manawatu membership. Stay tuned for some great initiatives and opportunities for our members. If you’re not currently a financial member, then you’ll be wanting to join!
Meanwhile, enjoy your riding, but make sure you can be seen, especially at night. Two rear and one good front light are a must and reflective patches are great additions. There’s no such thing as a cold ride, only cold clothing, so rug up and treat yourself with some good gloves and toe covers for comfort. A trick I use is to put a piece of plastic (from a good quality plastic shopping bag) down the front of my jersey over my thermal or second layer. It costs nothing and if I get too hot I can pull it out and put it in my back pocket.
Good riding.
Steve.