RUSA and Excursion was:Re: AUK membership renewal

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Thanks Mover folk.

Personalised number plates are a bit of s/wank IMHO.

I hadn't realised that piece is over a decade old. No wonder it has to keep being updated.

[hellymedic]

[Totally OT]
My brother bought V3 CHT as a gift for his wife's Big Birthday; each to his/her own!

Car-free of Queensbury.

[nextSibling]

the peculiar Regional Brevet Administration system whereby one person only in a geographical region can decide the brevet calendar and and only that person can design brevets.

I'm an RBA.

Any RUSA member within the region for which I'm responsible is very welcome to design and organize routes and brevets. On the contrary, recruiting and retaining organizers and volunteers is a constant challenge. The calendar for ACP brevets is decided in collaboration with local membership, neighboring RBAs (to try to reduce schedule conflicts), the availability of willing volunteers and weather considerations. The only organizational constraint is that ACP sanctioned brevets must be submitted to ACP in October of the previous year. RUSA sanctioned brevets can be organized up to a couple of weeks in advance.

Apart from promoting brevets and attracting volunteers to organize them, the primary role of RBAs is to ensure ACP and RUSA procedures are followed, insurance is maintained, and as a provider of local knowledge about suitability (safety) of routes.

I personally know several fellow RBAs and the notion that they are in any way a bottleneck to brevet availability is way off the mark. They all work long, unpaid hours maintaining and organizing brevets in their regions and trying to locally grow participation.

As always in volunteer run organizations, the biggest obstacle to growth is the availability of volunteers to do the necessary work. On the other hand, there's always those members who never do anything but turn up to ride and are nevertheless quick to tell us how things should be done.

[hellymedic]

the peculiar Regional Brevet Administration system whereby one person only in a geographical region can decide the brevet calendar and and only that person can design brevets.

I'm an RBA.

Any RUSA member within the region for which I'm responsible is very welcome to design and organize routes and brevets. On the contrary, recruiting and retaining organizers and volunteers is a constant challenge. The calendar for ACP brevets is decided in collaboration with local membership, neighboring RBAs (to try to reduce schedule conflicts), the availability of willing volunteers and weather considerations. The only organizational constraint is that ACP sanctioned brevets must be submitted to ACP in October of the previous year. RUSA sanctioned brevets can be organized up to a couple of weeks in advance.

Apart from promoting brevets and attracting volunteers to organize them, the primary role of RBAs is to ensure ACP and RUSA procedures are followed, insurance is maintained, and as a provider of local knowledge about suitability (safety) of routes.

I personally know several fellow RBAs and the notion that they are in any way a bottleneck to brevet availability is way off the mark. They all work long, unpaid hours maintaining and organizing brevets in their regions and trying to locally grow participation.

As always in volunteer run organizations, the biggest obstacle to growth is the availability of volunteers to do the necessary work. On the other hand, there's always those members who never do anything but turn up to ride and are nevertheless quick to tell us how things should be done.

We have the same issues in the UK!

Criticism often comes from those uninvolved with the practicalities of running events.

[Charlie Polecat]

They all work long, unpaid hours maintaining and organizing brevets in their regions and trying to locally grow participation.

You must be the exception.

I 'own' 13 perms and pops and am forever organising outings. Speak for your self my friend.

[jsabine]

They all work long, unpaid hours maintaining and organizing brevets in their regions and trying to locally grow participation.

You must be the exception.

I 'own' 13 perms and pops and am forever organising outings. Speak for your self my friend.

I'm curious. Are you implying - while carefully not saying explicitly - that your local RBA (presumably one of the six in Texas) does not either run local brevets themselves, or enable others to organise them?

[Exit Stage Left]

A rising tide lifts all boats. This is from an article about US Cycling in 2009.

Lance has provided the opportunity for almost a prospective chronological study of the impact of an identifiable hero or icon on a sport like cycling. He was in the sport and successful for seven years and then out for three and now he’s back in. While Lance was at the top of the sport, our annual growth rates were, in terms of membership numbers, around 5 percent. When Lance retired three years ago, our growth did drop down to about 3 percent for a couple of years. Now Lance is back and our growth rates are back to 4.5 percent or close to 5. He definitely has an impact. Our membership numbers have more than doubled since 2002. Our number of races have gone up dramatically. Our number of clubs, all the things that you associate with growth of a sport, all those indicators are trending upward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/sports/cycling/17cycling.html

The fallout from that is well known, and I'm not surprised that participation in the USA is under pressure. There are obvious lessons to be learnt for the UK. Recent controversies about Wiggins and Froome can be seen a sort of protective pre-tarnishing, in order to lessen the business impact of a fall from grace.

The big trends I've seen at PBP and LEL have been the participation of Taiwan, Indonesia, the PRC, Thailand and India. That followed on from growth in Japan.

YACF is in a good position to tell the story of Audax, as it encompasses all the generations of its growth in the 'Anglosphere'. I see stories as integral to Randonee. The big change has come from how those stories are told. Ivo's focus on GPS is interesting, as that technology is embedded in the Strava narrative. That's part of 'active' storytelling, which also encompasses Twitter and Facebook.

I'm part of the long-form tradition of storytelling, and the AUK and RUSA magazines are an excellent platform for those stories. Those publications help sustain an 'armchair' membership, but there's a coming generation who don't read long articles, and can't write them as a consequence.

I'm interested in how much government involvement there is in promoting cycling in India and the Far East, I know that there's plenty in Taiwan. 

[mattc]

[Totally OT]
My brother bought V3 CHT as a gift for his wife's Big Birthday; each to his/her own!

Car-free of Queensbury.

So he's given her a surname AND a personalised plate? What a guy 

[hellymedic]

[Totally OT]
My brother bought V3 CHT as a gift for his wife's Big Birthday; each to his/her own!

Car-free of Queensbury.

So he's given her a surname AND a personalised plate? What a guy 

He's also 'given' her three sons and a daughter with that surname...

Youngest son is 17 today; road users beware!