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