EasyRide

We have started a new regular BUG ride. You should notice on the Calendar page and in Cycling Central an entry that reads like this:-

Every Thursday -EasyRide 13-20 km; Slow pace; Mostly off-road cyclepaths/possibly some on road with light traffic. Contact: John 6655 4898. Meet 7:30 at Howard Street (racecourse). Very easy flat ride for inexperienced cyclists on Hogbin Drive Cycleway with optional extra distance for those wanting to do more.

You are probably aware that there are new cyclists around that need to build up their confidence and their strength on flat easy rides as they find our first Sunday of the month rides a little difficult.

So the Midweek EasyRide is designed to cater for them. The basic ride is just up and back on the Hogbin Drive Cycleway. For those who want a little more they can do some "add-on" bits before, during or after. We have discovered that the coffee is good at the university too!

So please come along if you can and nurture these riders and support the ride leaders. If we have enough leaders we can maintain this as a weekly ride. The ride will usually finish by 9am including coffee. Sometimes riders may then decide they want to do more -if they haven't got to rush off to work!

If you know any new riders who could join us encourage them to do so.
Tell them they will soon get the bug with the BUG!

John

Where's Wally?

Anyone know where Wally is?

Inspiration?

The photo that inspired the Schmidt family?

John.

Combined BUG rides (Inter BUG rides?)

I have been thinking over how the BUGs might combine their rides more. You can of course go and ride with other BUGs whenever you like. Already this year I have joined rides with DUBBUG, NAMBUG and NEBUG and as a result gone places I wouldn’t have known about otherwise and enjoyed meeting new people.

Actually the Coffs BUG 2007 calendar has 2 rides in NamBUG “territory” (plus the Back to Bowra weekend) and 3 rides in DUBBUG “territory”. In 2006 we had a weekend in NEBUG “territory”. We have also had occasions when the neighbouring BUG riders crossed our path or we had similar rides scheduled on the same day.

This hasn’t created any problems but if we worked together and combined some of our rides there would be mutually beneficial social and practical benefits. We would get to do rides we might not know about hosted by other BUGs and vice versa. They would show us their favourite rides and we would show them ours. Other BUGs also do some things differently and we get a greater variety of experiences or get ideas or inspiration for how we might do things.

So here’s a proposal to have joint rides with neighbouring BUGS in 2008. These rides would appear on our Coffs BUG calendar as well as on the other BUGs calendars:-

• NamBUG would lead 3 rides in Nambucca area
• DUBBUG would lead 3 rides in Bellingen shire
• CoffsBUG would lead 3 rides in Coffs area*

Coffs BUG would also include these on their calendar:-

• KRC would lead 1 ride in Kempsey area
• CoffsBUG would have 1 weekend away in Armidale with NEBUG
• NEBUG weekend visiting Coffs BUG* (return visit)

*One Coffs led ride would be a breakfast ride. This would also be the weekend that NEBUG visited.

This would be a total of 11 rides out of our 28** for the year (8 hosted by other BUGS; 3 by us). Only two rides would involve significant travel time Kempsey 1 ½ hours Armidale 2 ½ hours. One of the NamBUG rides could be the Back to Bowra w/e if it is held in 2008.

**Our usual ride calendar has 28 rides each year consisting of:-
12 breakfast rides per year –1st Sunday of month
16 Sunday rides (12 on the 3rd Sunday each month + 4 rides on the 5th Sunday of the month)

So in monthly plan form the combined rides 2008 calendar could look like this:-


So what do you think of this proposal? Please comment (to do so click on the word “comments”). I am hoping to very soon arrange a meeting of the 3 local BUG groups to discuss working together more. So far we have only generally agreed that it is a good idea. This proposal hasn’t been put to them yet.

John Gray

"Using" our bikes!

Well, now that we are members of a Bicycle User Group, I guess you could say we have been inspired to be "using" our bikes more. In other words, compared to last year, Marc and I, at any rate, have really been making an effort to get out and on our bikes.

We'd love to be able to say that riding our bikes has replaced using the car, but our locality and practicality (carting 3 kids around) does make that difficult. I should make an effort to ride into Woopi from Sandy occasionally though... something to work on.

As some of you know we have managed to ride our road tandem into Coffs from Sandy down the dreaded highway - 23km each way to the City Centre for the Community Ride. (Last time we thus totalled 82.7km, and, yes, Garry, Marc flogged us all the way home that day so that we made the 30 kph average speed mark.) That will get harder to do as the sun rises later and later each week, despite having bought good lights.

After piking out of riding in the rain last Saturday, this week we have risen early two mornings to ride down the highway again, up Bruxner, back along Central Bucca road, and back up home, which at 45km isn't too shabby. If you ever wanted to know why we ride tandems, (and particularly a road tandem) I can give one of the reasons as being "speed". This morning we got a new max speed record of 90 kph (on Bucca Road). Yes, it did feel FAST!

On Sunday we took to the mountain bikes (yes, single bikes!) and headed for the hills west of Sandy. We feel quite ashamed that it has taken us 10 years to start exploring the state forest a mere 5 km from home. There's actually quite a lot of it out there!

We did a 28km round trip, first heading south, then west and around to come back 'out' up at Woopi near the Flora Reserve (Woolgoolga Creek Road). There were a few hills in there.. some rideable ones (one of which Marc has now dubbed 'Gasping Hill' in honour of my lack of aerobic fitness - and stupidity in not actually engaging the lowest gear when I thought I had). We had to push the bikes up 'Boyd's Hill', (and it was steeper than that hill we pushed bikes up on the Repton ride, John!). We'll keep exploring the area, checking out different forest roads, with the aim of maybe leading a MTB BUG ride out that way next year maybe! Or if anyone is interested in any 'unofficial' exploratory riding out that way with us, let us know. We have reached the point of leaving the sloths kids at home for a few hours on a Sunday while we go out and enjoy ourselves.

With all the different types of bike riding options available, we've now decided that too many bikes is never enough, and we're getting single road bikes. Marc's bought himself one on eBay - picking it up on the weekend - and we're investigating one for me. I've heard about a group of girls intending on doing some road bike rides on a weekday morning, so I'd like to see how I go with that.

All in all, we are certainly bigger?...better?... bicycle users than we used to be. And undoubtedly a bit fitter as well.


Anyway, enough about us... I basically posted this in the hope that it might be a catalyst for some more contributions from BUG members. It would be interesting to read how others 'use' their bikes in between BUG rides.

Send your post to this email address: trace(at)exemail.com.au - replace the (at) with @ and I will ... post it!

Tracey Schmidt

PS. Our apologies re this Sunday's breakfast ride. We have to be at a netball carnival all day.