Message From the Shorefire Director – Thanks to ALL!!

“It takes a village”

Well maybe not an entire village, but it took more than 70 volunteers and bakers to put on the Shorefire event this year.

Wow – what a great day we had Saturday!!  We were so fortunate to have such great weather for this year’s first Century event.  We had a total of 398 registered for the 2018 Shorefire Century, 138 participants pre-registering and another 260 showed up the day of the event to register.  I was at the Middletown High School for the entire day starting with Registration and later working the Middletown HS Rest Stop and heard so many good things being said about the conditions of (most of) the roads, the roads that we selected for the route to follow, the scenery, the rest stops, the pleasant weather and most of all about the volunteers. 

We filled 46 positions with 30 different volunteers (lucky for me some volunteered to help by taking on multiple roles) to put on the event.  Although we shopped for food and drink for the riders, twenty-four bakers provided baked goods to put a personal touch on this event.  I got so many compliments on the baked goods from the cyclists, most saying that they do a lot of events like this and this is the only one that provides baked goods.  They felt that the baked goods are so much better than the store bought food and appreciated the effort.  We tried something new this year – serving grilled hot dogs at Middletown HS at the end and it went over well.  I hope that when you finished the ride, you stopped over for a hot dog before heading home.

The rest stops at Smyrna High School and Hartly Volunteer Fire Station saw a mix of old and new volunteers as Jenn Wilde had her first experience volunteering at Hartly with seasoned vetereans Sue McNulty and Ed McNulty.  Ernie Smith and Natalie Moist were able to convince Ernie’s brother David and his wife Ronnie as first time volunteers to help at Smyrna HS along with another new volunteer, Cindy Amalfitano. 

We had a mix of new and experienced volunteers at Registration with Kevin Crocco, Dan Durishan, Mike Katz, Chris Lano, Evette Morrow, Theron Palmer, Cathy Skelley, and Robert Stover helping me to move the cyclists thru the registration process and onto the road as quickly as possible.  For just the second event we not only accepted cash and checks as payment, but we also accepted plastic.  This was a painless process for the Club and the participant so we will be promoting this as a payment option for all events going forward.

Kevin Crocco and Mike Katz stayed at Middletown HS with me as we converted the Registration area to a rest stop shortly after closing registration at 9:00.  Craig Deppish stopped by around 9:15 to drop off baked goods and saw us working shorthanded to prepare the rest stop for the first wave of 37-mile riders, so he grabbed a knife and made PB&J sandwiches for an hour.  Barb Gallagher, Jay Gallagher, Mike Katz, Ed McNulty and Sue McNulkty helped me to close down the rest stop and repack the trailer to the ceiling with all of our gear and supplies as we closed down the event around 5:00 in the evening.

You can thank Gail Robillard and Barb Gallagher for the fresh fruit at the rest stops as they made the trip to Willey’s Friday to pick up the 27 watermelons, 2 cases of navel oranges and 4 cases of ripe bananas.

SAG Coordinator Keith Hoke helped to render aid by directing the SAG drivers, Mike Salter, Brian Donovan, and Tom Brazill to those in need.  Fortunately on this year’s Shorefire Keith, Mike, Brian, and Tom were not busy at all!

Ed McNulty led the way by assembled a crew of ten others for Route Marking.  Ed was joined by Ron Bove, Craig Deppish, Brian Donovan, Jay Gallagher, Mike Kealey, Dianne Leipold, Sue McNulty, Theron Palmer, Dwight Siers, and Carol Siers to mark the 37 mile, 67 mile and 101 mile routes on the Friday before the event.  Because of DelDOT paint use restrictions we have moved away from paint to Route Arrows and are very pleased with the results of the change.  It may take a little longer for us to put down the adhesive arrows, which biodegrade in a weeks’ time, but the cyclists that use the arrows for navigating the route find that the arrows are much more obvious than paint.  We moved to Route Arrows in 2017 and will continue to use them going forward.

And all of the baked goods were provided by this group of generous bakers Deb Alerts, Leigh Belcher, Denise Boyle, Emily Ciancio, Maureen & Jack Ciesielski, Linda Conley for Gene Messick, Craig Deppish, Richard Harder, April Hogan, Jeff Manlove, Natalie Moist, Dinesh Mistry, Keelin Murphy, Glenn Nichols, Jack Nystrom, Fred Oldham, Mary Rock, Walt Samuels, Dave Shapero, Cathy Skelly, Jim Steele, Molly Wessell, Jenn Wilde, and Brian Wilkinson.  (If I missed anyone please let me know) AND Wayne Barndt and Ed Ziegler.

Thanks to the 400 cyclists that participated in the 2018 Shorefire.  You made the weeks and months of planning that led up to Saturday well worth the effort.

At lastly my heartfelt thanks goes out to every one of volunteers and bakers for sharing some of their time with us to make this a successful event for the Club!  We/I could not have done it without you!

Next up – The Savage Century, Saturday September 29th!  Emily will need volunteers and bakers so please contact her at SavageCentury@whiteclaybicycleclub.org if you can help in any way!!

JW Haupt
WCBC Shorefire Director

I hope that there is someone that is willing to step into the role of directing the 2019 Shorefire.  Please drop me a note if you think that you might be interested, I would like to speak with you about it.

(09/04/18 – Added Wayne and Ed as Route Marking volunteers)