Well, after another hard-fought, knock-down, drag-out battle I won the opportunity to be your Ride Captain for another year.  Yay, me. 

My first order of business is to again congratulate our 2017 Most Improved Riders: John Holloway, Susan Gilbert and Nick Lambrenos.  

Congratulations as well to our 2017 Ride Leader of the Year Clay Howard.  In 2017.  Clay led 78 rides overall to include the Tuesday-Thursday evening rides and Tuesday-Thursday night rides.  Only our President Al Matera led more rides in 2017 (84), but Section 100.3, sub-section A, prevents an officer of the club from taking the award.  It’s why we get paid the big bucks.  Nonetheless, Al deserves a great vote of thanks from all of us. 

I want to thank all of our ride leaders who served last year and who will continue to lead rides in 2018. 

Speaking of 2018, I hope to make this year as enjoyable and as safe as possible.  We will keep our established rides as is, but hope to expand the number and variety of our Sunday and ad hoc rides.  As always, I welcome new ideas and suggestions.  However, when you do have a suggestion for a new ride, please don’t forget the “who’s we Kimosabe?” factor when it comes to the heavy lifting.  Some tend to think of the Ride Captain as Stephen King.  “Hey, I have a great idea for a horror story.  It’s about two cyclists who collide.  I just need you to do that word thing you do.”  Doesn’t work that way. 

Now that I used the “c” word, it might be a good time to recall that in 2017 we have an unusually high number of accidents ranging from hitting hidden potholes to accidental touching.  Considering how many miles we ride as a club, our overall safety record was very good, but even one accident resulting in injury or bike damage is too much.  We hope that those events will serve as reminders to take care when riding in a group and to recognize the hazards on some of our lightly traveled and often poorly maintained rural roads.

I am looking forward to a zero accident year.

Finally, kudos to our riders who have continued riding since the New Year despite unusually low temps and long periods of crummy weather.  We’ve had people out riding in 20 degree wind chills.  I won’t mention any names in case their institutions find out they’ve been riding without signing out, but will salute them nonetheless. 

Thanks to Mike Schumm and his January century, we’ve ridden more than 2,500 miles in January despite the weather.

Looking forward to seeing more of you when normal people weather returns. 

Paul Cariker

FCC Ride Captain

The 19th Annual Cannonball Century registration is now open. Go to the event page to the event registration page.

Cannonball Century Information

Why should you and your cycling friends be members of the Fredericksburg Cyclists Club? 

Well, among other things we sponsor a lot of rides (right now about 4 a week) to encourage cyclists and make riding more fun, we, through our representation on the Virginia Bicycling Federation (VBF) promote cycling, cyclists rights and safe cycling legislation and we promote a variety of social events were we can get together with other cyclists.

So, if you aren’t a current member in the FCC, we encourage you to join and take part in supporting cycling in our region. For further answers to questions you may have check out the FAQ!