immovable objects

On 2006-02-24, ray (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

So I guess it's load up the packs and back to the road solo, there
doesn't seem a lot else I can do. Are full-load cycle-tourists a dying
species? I don't seem to be seeing any 18 year olds doing it.

MBTC definitely suffers from only having an aging population -- I
think I may be the only (ex-)member under 40 (too broke to pay fees
this year, and I don't enjoy the slow riding so much).

--
TimC
If you ever fear that machines will surpass humans in intelligence,
just ask Microsoft to write the OS. -- POTU in RHOD

ray said:

Greetings All,

G'day there

Quoted message said:

I attended a meeting of my local cycling club last night. I have been told
in no uncertain terms that they are not going to consider any rides beyond
their immediate geographical area (the worst roads in the state) or
anything that gets them out of bed before 9am or keeps them out after 4pm.

Yep, that is, and always has been, the problem with that group as far as I'm
concerned. Now their numbers are so low that the whole club could go on a
ride and use one minibus for transport to the start.

Quoted message said:

This naturally precludes touring in any meaningful sense and will do so

<snip>

Quoted message said:

This is naturally depressing, as there is no other worthwhile cycling
group east of the city (Melbourne), and I have little interest in More
Bakeries Than Cycling

Hey, you got something against bakeries or whaaat? :-)

Quoted message said:

So I guess it's load up the packs and back to the road solo, there doesn't
seem a lot else I can do. Are full-load cycle-tourists a dying species? I
don't seem to be seeing any 18 year olds doing it.

Nope. It's just that most people don't discover the joys of touring until
they're in their 30s these days. We get plenty of 40-50 yr old new members -
membership currently sitting around 300 individuals, with an average 2 rides
run per weekend, usually 10-20 on each of those rides, and between 40 and 70
attending our _weekly_ meeting.

Hopefully I'll see you out there some time Ray.

Cheers
Peter

Peter Signorini said:

ray said:

This is naturally depressing, as there is no other worthwhile cycling
group east of the city (Melbourne), and I have little interest in More
Bakeries Than Cycling

Hey, you got something against bakeries or whaaat? :-)

Quoted message said:

So I guess it's load up the packs and back to the road solo, there
doesn't seem a lot else I can do. Are full-load cycle-tourists a dying
species? I don't seem to be seeing any 18 year olds doing it.

Nope. It's just that most people don't discover the joys of touring until
they're in their 30s these days. We get plenty of 40-50 yr old new
members - membership currently sitting around 300 individuals, with an
average 2 rides run per weekend, usually 10-20 on each of those rides, and
between 40 and 70 attending our _weekly_ meeting.

Oooh yeah, almost forgot

MAD Ride - all new routes around Woodend
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mbtc/Images/mad2006entry.pdf

and the club website
www.mbtc.org.au

Cheers
Peter

Peter Signorini said:

Nope. It's just that most people don't discover the joys of touring until
they're in their 30s these days.

Not necessarily true, I know of plenty of -35's doing their own self-supported tours. Can't cite actual stats but there's seems to be a reasonable number of Young People touring the countryside. Unfortunately the public image of some touring groups could be putting them off joining up.

cfsmtb said:

Not necessarily true, I know of plenty of -35's doing their own
self-supported tours. Can't cite actual stats but there's seems to be a
reasonable number of Young People touring the countryside.

Yes, I have been aware of this. In our club we just seem to see lots of new
members joining at around 35-40.

Quoted message said:

Unfortunately
the public image of some touring groups could be putting them off
joining up.

Public image, putting them off? Please do tell what ths is.

Cheers
Peter

ray said:

More Bakeries Than Cycling,

lol.

Personally, if T = touring, then your geographical area is Planet Earth.

Quoted message said:

So I guess it's load up the packs and back to the road solo, there
doesn't seem a lot else I can do. Are full-load cycle-tourists a dying
species? I don't seem to be seeing any 18 year olds doing it.

Okay, this is what we did when the "Committee" of "Bowel" Movement
decided that all they wanted was monthly Dinky Rides around a park. Of
course it was in the 70's, so you have to adapt it.

1) Form "A Touring committee". We already had an informal one, but
suddenly it became "formal", i.e. we advertised the touring committee
meetings, which was always held at someone house.

2) Stop running the dinky Rides, immediately. At the time, the members
of the touring committee werew running an easy and a hard dinky ride
each month. It help that the club committee members were hard pressed to
find the behinds with both hands and when they took over, there was
always an "incident" each ride. Nope, nothing to do with ATC.

3) Always attend the "club meetings" and talk to any newbie if they are
here for the tours and slip them a list of planned tours for the next
couple of months if they are. Do not have the name of the club on the top.

4) Tell any new person at the club meetings that is interested in tours
that "It is useless to join this club as they only do dinky rides, Far
better to join <insert better org>". This was under the "three
visits/rides then join please" idea.

5) Make sure you keep posters listing the rides up at places like unis,
colleges, shopping centres, etc, etc. You might find secondary schools
more approachable these days; anti-obesity and all that.

6) Offer to do a rides slide night at "the club" and forget to put in
any of the dinky rides, but only show hard-core touring slides. Make
sure everyone is smiling, always smiling, even when they are struggling
to lift the bicyle off them when they fallen over on a rocky creek
crossing or they are clawing their way up a muddy washout.

7) "circulate, circulate, circulate" was Miss Piggy's advice to young
ladies and it helps recruit younger (and older) people if you maximise
this aspects of rides. so make sure the group has a communal lunch at
one spot. We even found that some liked an after ride social (bloody
coffee shops)

8) Clothed and unclothed swimming holes. Although at our age, it might
be best not to go swimming in the unclothed one. We would just suss
these out on exploration trips and announce this place for clothed and
down their for unclothed.

9) Tail end rider. Always, always, always have a designated tail end
rider, who stays at the last person and is hand with bicycle tools.
Never let a new person feel they might be left behind as they will never
come back.

10) Rental gear. It wasn't as formalised then, but if someone completed
one ride and was keen, sometimes we would loan them an old tent or
sleeping bag, or panniers to do other trips.

11) Tain tour/ride leaders. It is easy to just do everything yourself,
but if you are getting a dozen people come on a ride, start walking
other people through the process of organising tours, right from map
searching, to exploratory rides, to actually managing the group (Point 9
especially). This paid off on one of my rides when some clown went over
a crest on the wrong side of the road and was cleaned up by a car. The
otherkids he was with knew instantly what to do and called the
police/ambulance and everything was all over and done with by the time I
at the tail caught up.

Other things that helped was one of the club committee members doing a
bicycle maintenance night and absolutely trashing someones economical
bicycle. Really funny because it was the standard of bicycle that most
people had. I know that the bike (and owner) he garbaged and actually
broke a few bits on that night actually went on to ride to the NT, while
he continued to do dinky rides on his $x,000 bike.

Eventually they changed their minds, but we never did get back to
running two dinky rides a month. Loosing one weekend a month to dinky
rides was bad enough. Also, we used it as part of the tour leader
training programe {:-). Picture one "old committee member" being chitted
by a 15 year old for doing something wrong on a dinky ride. Priceless.