ANNUAL BBC BANQUET

We had our annual End-of-Winter banquet and business meeting at Chapman's on Saturday evening, March 6.

By decision of the executive board and in a departure from recent practice we charged a nominal $5 per person. (The actual cost is closer to $20.) This helps people take RSVP a little more seriously, and it also is more in line with our non-profit status.

There were approximately 90 people there, including several guests from agencies that received BBC grants this year.

Social Director Autumn McCoy opened the evening with a welcome and some announcements. Mark Villanova offered an invocation.

After dinner co-president Jennifer Miers presided.

She introduced several club members who said a few words about the different ride opportunities this year: Saturday touring rides (with short medium and long options, including century possibilities at least once a month in the summer), Sunday NiceNEasy rides, Tuesday/Thursday Training Rides, Wednesday women's rides, Tuesday/Thursday OWLS training rides, and, something new, Saturday afternoon Slow Spokes rides.

Jennifer Smallwood, chair of our Grant Committee introduced representatives of the various groups and agencies that received funding through our grant process, and those people shared a few words about their grant plans. It was actually quite heartening to see the kinds of "micro-financed" activities going on in the community from our grants. We'll discuss this more in another post. For now, let's emphasize that it is the income from RAIN, the Ride Across Indiana, that has allowed us to develop our grant program, which fits very nicely in with our non-profit status. In particular it is the income from jersey sales, developed by RAIN director Joe Anderson and Barbara Anderson, that has funded our grants.

Then we moved to election of officers. Secretary Keith Bobay introduced the slate put forward by the nominating committee. The following were elected to one-year terms:

Keith Vogelsang, President
Mark Villanova, Vice President
Kathy Cummins, Secretary
Joe Anderson, Treasurer

We would be remiss without mentioning the retiring officers: Co-presidents Jen Miers and Mark Napier, Vice President Tom Whitehead, and Secretary Keith Bobay, and thanking them for their effective service to the club this past year. In addition here are some of the people who  served in other capacities in 2009:

Adopt-a-Road initiative: Jen Miers
Nice 'N Easy rides: Ron Brown
Women's Rides: Jen Miers
Touring Director: Mike Finger
Blog editor: Allan Edmonds
Website: Mark Napier, Keith Vogelsang
Web Re-design: Klaus Rothe
Safety and Education: Cathy Meyer
Advocacy: Keith Vogelsang
Grants: Jennifer Smallwood
RAIN director: Joe Anderson
Membership: Tammy Berger, succeeding Jim Lang
Nominating Committee: Keith Vogelsang
OWLS organization: CE Taylor
Electronic map development: Jim Schroeder

(Let me know if I've inadvertently omitted someone who should be on this list.)

Finally Cathy Meyer introduced the evening's speaker, Raymond Hess, Senior Transportation Analyst for the city of Bloomington, bicycling commuter, and trained League of American Bicyclists instructor, discussed issues of bicycling safety. Interestingly, he pointed out that of all bicycling crashes, only 17% involve motorized vehicles. Of those, fully half are the fault of the cyclists. He then proceeded to discuss the most common issues in bicycle/car interaction.