February 2018 Top Talk -Portland Bicycling Club

February 2018 Top Talk

President Chip Kyle

This past Sunday, the club held its annual awards banquet, and we had a great turnout with somewhat north of 130 + attendees. We even had to set up an extra table for a few club members who decided to come at the last minute. As evidenced by the level of noise in the room, everyone was enjoying themselves and conducting lively conversations. It was especially nice to see Betty and Dave Suryan in attendance. As most of you know, they suffered a life threatening crash on their tandem while training for a late summer bike ride last year. While there is still recovery ahead for both of them, each had smiles and warm hugs as they reconnected with friends and fellow riders.

We have a very active club as indicated by the number of mileage awards presented at the banquet. There were six newer members who had accumulated 10,000 miles riding with the club. There were an impressive twelve members who have accumulated more than 50,000 miles, and two of those have ridden more than 200,000 miles. Our two highest accumulative mileage riders are (no surprise!) Scott Poindexter with 234,000+ miles and Dick Weber with 255,000+. Impressive!

Speaking of club mileage, we have a nice addition to the website created by Mark Hartel. After you log onto the site with your ID and password, you will be able to see your current YTD miles under the link Rider Mileage in the Members Only menu. The information is up to date as of the ride sheets that have been turned in to the club statistician. (You can also see what rides sheets are missing.)  Check out the feature if you haven’t already done so.

Finally, as a club, we do ride a lot and unfortunately sometimes have accidents. At the awards banquet we handed out seven “Come Back” awards (no, Phil Brown was not one of the recipients) for returning to riding after a significant accident. This is the most we have handed out in the years I have attended the banquet – a record we don’t want to duplicate. Please, be careful out there!