The 2019 Annual Banquet was a hit, just ask any of the members in attendance. Great choice of foods, drinks, and desserts complimented conversations with other members of the Club.
Our speaker Joan Hanscom, executive director of the Trexlertown Velodrome in the Lehigh Valley, shared her storied cycling past which included many envious jobs in our favorite sport of cycling from being a business partner in the US Gran Prix of Cyclocross for nine years, to being recognized for that successful series and being tapped to bring ‘cross from Europe to the US for the first time with the UCI Cyclocross World Championship (Louisville, KY, 2013). She has also been the VP of Event Services at USA Cycling, an event director for the Wachovia Cycling Services (you remember Philly Week!!), race promoter, cycling racer and longtime cyclist, and an advocate for women in cycling. She’s has had an amazing journey that continues at a grass roots level at the T-Town Velodrome as she works to awaken that giant once again! More on that later.
At the Banquet new WCBC apparel was introduced as we are now offering embroidered polo
shirts (for men) and V-neck tops (for women) along with two styles of baseball caps all with the WCBC logo embroidered if full color along with our club kits for riding and t-shirts for more relaxed and casual wear. Check out the website for more information about the embroidered apparel.
A new Executive Committee was voted in, with changes being limited to our Membership chair stepping down, Jaymi Cook volunteering to be the Savage event director, and the hunt for this year’s Shorefire event director still on-going.
It was shared with everyone that 33 Ride Leaders lead eight or more rides in 2018 so they qualified for a ride leader jersey, a gift certificate to a local bike shop, credit toward the purchase of a club kit or embroidered apparel, or a donation would be made to one of the cycling related non-profits that the Club supports this year. It was also shared that there were 920 rides posted on the ride calendar and because of the excellent leadership of our ride leaders only three accidents were reported! If you assume that each ride had a minimum of 5 or more riders, that means we lead more than 4,500 people on club rides, with only had three reported accidents. That is amazing! Although that statistic is amazing, we are striving for zero accidents this year.
Service Awards were handed out to those individuals that provided noteworthy services to the club over the past year. Recipients were Barb Gallagher, Glenn Nichols, Doug Kennedy, Debbie Wilson, and Emily Ciancio. Thank you for all you’ve done over the past year!
The Distinguished Service Awards Annual Honorees, are individuals that have contributed in a significant way to the ongoing success of the club and the cycling community over the past year. This year’s Honoree is John Bare. John, congratulations on a well-deserved honor.
The Club’s four major events, Icicle, Doublecross, Shorefire, and Savage provided the club with profits that afforded it the opportunity to once again donate in excess of $13,000 to cycling related non-profits and entities that support the club. This year’s list of thirteen recipients is very similar to last year’s list.
Lastly, Joan Hanscom piqued the interest of many in attendance to travel to the track to watch a race and even try a spin around the Velodrome track. Over the next week or so we will be working with Joan to set up a day when WCBC will “rent” the track for our use. Tentatively it looks like it may be sometime in July. Details will follow on the website, Facebook, Twitter, and the Listserve when they become available, but a brief summary is…they will provide the bikes and instruction on how to ride a fixed gear bike around the steeply banked outdoor oval track and then turn us loose to ride the oval. The group will be limited to about 40 people, so if this sounds like fun to you, keep your eyes peeled for something the beginning of March, if we can pull it together that quickly. Oh, and we will be chartering and traveling up by bus for this adventure, so you can leave your car behind too.
There were door prizes too. Fifteen in all. We reached out to the local bike shops and all made contributions that matched the $25 gift card purchases the club made. Local contributors (listed alphabetically) of gift cards or comparables were Bike Line, Brandywine Bikes, Garrison’s Cyclery of Centrville, Henry’s Bicycle Shop, Trek Bicycle Wilmington, and Wooden Wheels Service and Repair. Our cub kit provider, Athlos Custom Cycling Apparel offered two free jerseys and a wind shell as door prizes. Thanks go out to everyone that provided their support.
That’s about it, we covered a lot during the “business” part of the banquet when we weren’t eating and chatting among ourselves. If you didn’t make it out this year, you missed a lot. Don’t miss out next year!
Thanks to all the volunteers who came early to setup and stayed late to clean up, your help was much appreciated. Special thanks to those folks who helped me with the planning: Dianne Leipold, Susan & Ed McNulty, Glenn Nichols, and Mary Rock.
Special thanks go out to your Social Chair, Emily Ciancio for a wonderful gathering for club members to spend some time together getting to know one another off the bike.
