Inside this Issue Ride Schedule 2-4 Parties 5 Club Trips 6-7 Ride Ratings 8 Membership application 11 Niagara Frontier Bicycle Club, Inc. Volume 43, Issue 4 We ride every day! May, Evening rides begin at 6:30 May 6, Trash and Treasure May 13, Betsy’s Beaucolic Batavia Ride & Party May 26, Members Memorial Ride May 28, Jim & Kathy’s Memorial Day Ride & Party June 30-July 4, Hudson Valley Club Trip July 26-29, 1000 Islands Club Trip Dates to Remember May, 2012 www.nfbc.com Great NFBC Rides for National Bike Month May is National Bike Month, promoted by the League of American Bicyclists since 1956 to advocate for safe bicycling. The high point of the month is Bike to Work Week — May 14-18 — which reaches a pinnacle with Bike to Work Day on May 18. Give it a try! And, celebrate National Bike Month by enjoying some of the great rides and events offered by NFBC. Community Service. For the 20 th year, NFBC will clean up its adopted highway on the May 6 th Trash & Treasure Ride. Following a 33/24 mile ride, John Herman will lead members in cleaning up a 2 mile section of Route 277 in Orchard Park, and then relax with a pizza party. Parties. The party season begins with “Betsy’s Beaucolic Batavia” on May 13 and Jim & Kathy’s Memorial Day Party Ride on May 28. See page 5 for more information. Pat Danaher wants you to try the South- towns Ride of the Month for May - Alden Center to North Java – on Sunday, May 13th. “This ride was designed in 1981 by Brenda Knight and has remained unchanged for 30+ years! The 45 mile route takes you out and back through the bucolic hills of Wyoming County past farms of all kinds, including the N. Seldon wind farm. A great rest stop in N. Java gets you ready for the mostly downhill ride back. Led and championed by Frank Soltiz (2008 Ride Leader of the Year) this is a ride not to be missed! Check the schedule on page 2 for specifics. Come on out!” Pat. Bill’s Training Ride on Saturday, May 19 was designed to help people train for the Tour de Cure on June 2, and covers some of the same roads as the Tour. Our ride was named for the late Bill McLaughlin who was a leader in organizing and fundraising for this American Diabetes Association cycling event. Non-NFBC members prepar- ing for the Tour de Cure may also join Bill’s Training Ride, so be prepared to offer riding tips to newbies as you enjoy the suburban and country scenery The Members’ Memorial Ride (century, metric and 30) will be held on Saturday, May 26 (See article on page 9). Some folks may tailgate afterward.
Transcript
Inside this Issue
Ride Schedule 2-4
Parties 5
Club Trips 6-7
Ride Ratings 8
Membership
application
11
N i a g a r a F r o n t i e r B i c y c l e C l u b , I n c .
Volume 43, Issue 4 We ride every day!
May, Evening
rides begin at 6:30
May 6, Trash and
Treasure
May 13, Betsy’s
Beaucolic Batavia Ride & Party
May 26, Members
Memorial Ride
May 28, Jim &
Kathy’s Memorial Day Ride & Party
June 30-July 4,
Hudson Valley Club Trip
July 26-29, 1000
Islands Club Trip
Dates to Remember
May, 2012
www.nfbc.com
Great NFBC Rides for National Bike Month
May is National Bike Month, promoted by the League of American Bicyclists since 1956 to advocate for safe bicycling. The high point of the month is Bike to Work
Week — May 14-18 — which reaches a pinnacle with Bike to Work Day on May 18. Give it a try! And, celebrate National
Bike Month by enjoying some of the great rides and events offered by NFBC. Community Service. For the 20th year,
NFBC will clean up its adopted highway on the May 6th Trash & Treasure Ride. Following a 33/24 mile ride, John Herman will lead members in cleaning up a 2 mile section of Route 277 in Orchard Park, and then relax with a pizza party.
Parties. The party season begins with “Betsy’s Beaucolic Batavia” on May 13 and Jim & Kathy’s Memorial Day Party Ride on May 28. See page 5 for more
information.
Pat Danaher wants you to try the South-towns Ride of the Month for May - Alden Center to North Java – on Sunday, May 13th. “This ride was designed in 1981 by Brenda Knight and has remained unchanged for 30+ years! The 45 mile route takes you out and back through the bucolic hills of Wyoming County past farms of all kinds, including the N. Seldon wind farm. A great rest stop in N. Java gets you ready for the mostly downhill ride back. Led
and championed by Frank Soltiz (2008 Ride Leader of the Year) this is a ride not to be missed! Check the schedule on page 2 for specifics. Come on out!” Pat.
Bill’s Training Ride on Saturday, May 19 was designed to help people
train for the Tour de Cure on June 2, and covers some of the same
roads as the Tour. Our ride was named for the late Bill McLaughlin
who was a leader in organizing and fundraising for this American Diabetes Association cycling event. Non-NFBC members prepar-
ing for the Tour de Cure may also join Bill’s Training Ride, so be prepared to offer riding tips to newbies as you enjoy the
suburban and country scenery
The Members’ Memorial Ride (century, metric and 30) will be held on Saturday, May 26 (See article on page 9). Some folks may tailgate afterward.
N F B C N e w s l e t t e r Page 2 May, 2012
May 2012
WEEKEND RIDE SCHEDULE
Difficulty Key: Easy = Easy Mod = Moderate MD = Moderately Difficult Diff = Difficult XD = Extra Difficult XXD
= Extra Extra Difficult Read about this Rating System on page 8.
Date Time Ride #
Ride Name Mileage Diff. Elev. Start Location Ride Leader
Sat, May 05
10:00 AM
758 Old Greenwalls 33 Easy 0 Richmond Lot off Frontier
Rd, Ellicott Complex, SUNY
at Buffalo Amherst
Sue Williams 688-2981
Sat, May 05
10:00 AM
383 The Nth Degree 31 /22 XD/MD 2000/ 1200
Hamlin Park (south parking lot), S Grove St E. Aurora
Pat Danaher 310-8136
Sun, May 06
10:00 AM
273 Trash & Treas-ure Ride
33 / 24 MD/Easy 1400/ 700
Chestnut Ridge Park, Casino Lot, Rt 277, Orchard Park
John Herman 698-8222
Sat, May 12
3:00 PM
357 Lancaster on the Weekend
38 / 26 Mod/Easy 0 Lancaster High School, 1 Forton Dr, between Central Ave & Pleasantview Dr.
Liz Skelton 400-6091
Sun, May 13
10:00 AM
763 Betsy's Beau-colic Batavia (Betsy’s Party Ride)
35/26 Mod/EZ 1100/
900
Lot behind Wendy's 44 Main St Batavia (old Genesee Mall)
Betsy Dexheimer 585-343-5172
Sun, May 13
10:00 AM
82 Alden Center to North Java
45 Diff 2600 Restaurant Parking Lot, Broadway (Rt. 20) & Three Rod, Alden, NY
Frank Soltiz 937-6924
Sat, May 19
10:00 AM
361 Bill's Training Ride
30 / 16 Easy 0 Amherst Museum, Tona-wanda Creek S at New Rd, Amherst
Larry and Barb Reade 633-7712
Sat, May 19
10:00 AM
384 Two Bottles And A Bush
42/ 23 Diff/ Mod 2200/ 1200
Parking Lot behind fire hall across from 44 Long Ave, Hamburg
On every month’s weekend ride schedule, in the col-umn labeled “Diff” for difficulty, rides are rated on a scale from “Easy” to “Extra, extra difficult” (although some rides aren’t rated at all). A
ride rating system is one way to let people know if a particular ride is a good match for their interests, abilities, and available time. The rating gives the ride-author’s esti-mate of ride difficulty, and so it may reflect distance as well as
climb, or elevation.
Most ride-authors make a subjec-tive judgment of the ride’s diffi-culty. They base it on their own experience, or perhaps the previ-
ous rating if it’s a route they have revised. One of our current ride-authors, Alex Setlik, has devised a quantitative method to combine climb and distance in determining the difficulty rating. Alex uses his formula and asso-ciated rating scale for the routes he authors, but oth-ers use more subjective estimates. If a ride comes to
the Ride Committee with no rating, the committee may attempt to assign one. As VP Dennis Powell says, for most ride-authors, ride ratings are “subjective guesstimates”. That doesn’t
mean they aren’t valuable, but they are only one of the pieces of
information we have about any given ride. Elevation, listed for most rides along with mileage, is a good in-dicator of the ride’s difficulty.
However, measuring elevation is a challenge in itself. Dennis says, “Some mapping software can do it, but it's not without a bit of ef-fort and built-in error. You need to plot the entire route in the mapping software in order for it
to give you a climb value. Unfor-tunately, some software follows terrain EXACTLY. So when you cross a deep ravine on a bridge, the mapping software measures it as if you went down into the ravine and back out, ignoring the bridge. Mapping software is also subject to a low de-
gree of resolution, so it won't pick up a lot of the smaller bumps. Depending on the particular route, mapping software can give values quite a bit off from what you actually encounter.” There is an alterna-
tive, according to Dennis: “A cycling computer with a barometric altimeter can indicate total climb and is probably the best way to measure a route. However,
not all altimeters work the same
way. To eliminate errors that might be due to environmental changes (temperature, weather fronts), some computers only measure large changes in a short amount of time, discounting the little bumps. Some computers DO measure
every ripple but may be subject to those environmental errors. Ask a
bunch of people who have such devices what their total climb was after a ride and the values can be all over the place.” The total ele-
vation listed for a ride doesn’t indi-cate the steepness of climbs, which
many riders believe is more important than the total amount of climb. So elevation too is a valuable piece of information, but not the total story. Finally, geographic location of the ride is a fall-back
indicator. Rides in Lancaster and south tend to in-clude rolling hills of varying grade, while rides north of there are more likely to cover flatter terrain. This is only useful for a general impression however; for example, north rides that climb the escarpment once
or more may rival south rides in total climb.
Does rating matter? For many (but not all) NFBC riders it does. Some don’t want to struggle to conquer one more hill, while oth-ers grow tired of straight, flat
(fast) routes. We’re all more likely to enjoy a ride if it is an in-formed choice. Fortunately the ride schedule gives us several pieces of information that, includ-ing the rating, let us choose the riding terrain and mileage we pre-
fer on any given day. Editor’s note: After the April issue of the NFBC Newsletter was pub-
lished, I received an email from a new member who wanted to understand better NFBC’s ride rating sys-tem. At that time, I replied with my own understand-
ing of it, but later thought it was a topic worth re-searching further and sharing with the whole club. In any given year, about 20% of our members are new to the club!
Ride Rating: How do E-Z and XXX rides differ, and does it matter?
V o l u m e 4 3 , I s s u e 4 N F B C N e w s l e t t e r Page 9
By Jim Vozga
The Members’ Memorial Rides will be held this year
on Saturday, May 26. It is the current NFBC prac-
tice to begin the ride with mention of members who
have died in the past year, and to ride in honor of
them and of all our fellow members who have
passed on. This year, special mention will be made
of Charlie Crist who passed in 2011.
The Members’ Memorial Ride began as the “Metzler-
Marquardt Memorial” Ride, established as far back
as 1978. Bill Marquardt was a friend of Jim Metzler,
one time NFBC President. Bill stayed at Jim’s home
overnight on a cross country bike ride and the next
day he was killed by a car not too far east from
here. At first, the Mileage Trophy was called the
Bill Marquardt Memorial Trophy. It was later
changed simply to the permanent mileage trophy
after the club decided to name the Century Ride in
his honor. A few years later, Jim Metzler was killed
while riding his motorcycle, and in 1981 his name
was added to the existing century ride. This single
day ride morphed into a Century Weekend due
largely to Debbie Dessert’s efforts. Rides from 25
to 200 miles were available, along with dinners and
overnight camping. It remained that way for over
25 years.
After several other active members passed due to a
variety of reasons, the ride name was changed to
the Members’ Memorial Ride. The first ride so
named occurred in 2001. Few members at that time
had belonged to the club when the original honor-
ees rode, so remembering a broader group of riders
seemed more fitting then, as it does today.
The Members’ Memorial Ride to be held on Saturday, May 26
NFBC now has 314 members (as of April 10). There are 42 new members. The 314 members are in 239 Households. 175 members from 2011 have not renewed their membership yet. Please send those renew-als in if you plan on cycling with us this year.
Welcome new members, including: Andrew Johnson, Julia Foy, Annette Brzezicki, Barbara & Ron Palazzo, Barbara Ciepiela, Bryan Jajkowski, Connie & Craig Snyder, Dan Johnson, Daniel Heims, Donna Fraser, Eric Milliman, Julie & Doug Stainton, Mark E. Murphy, Mary Z. Domanski, Michael Kugel, Alia Zeid, Liza Tretyakov, Peter & Diane McDermott, Leslie Peters, Ronald & Jean Stefanski, Samuel Scaduto, Scot Hewitt, Vicky Perry, William E. Johnson Jr.
By Roy Tocha
Terry Turski has taken over Sunshine
Committee duties from Sue Williams, who
decided to retire from her position. The
Sunshine Committee sends out greeting
cards on behalf of the NFBC to members
in need of good cheer, perhaps because of
an illness, crash, or death of a loved one.
Last year Sue Williams sent out 31 cards
on behalf of NFBC. Thank you, Sue, for a
job well done!
Sunshine Transition
Yoga for Cyclists and Runners NFBC member Mary Dedrick will be teaching "Yoga for Cyclists and Runners" at Blue Sky Yoga (1862 Hertel Ave) from May 8th - June 26th from 6-7 p.m on Tuesdays. She is looking forward to helping cyclists who want to improve their flexibility, core strength and balance and also reduce muscle tightness from long hours in the saddle! She is a certified yoga instructor with the Himalayan Institute and has been teachng yoga for 14 years. For registration and cost information, go to http://www.blueskybuffalo.com/Blue_Sky_Site/Class_Schedule.html
Bicycles will be speeding snail mail to you, via new commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service. In April, the Postal Service released a group of 1st class Forever stamps with the theme
“Go Green”. A commuting/shopping bicyclist is one of the block of 16 commemorative stamps that il-lustrate “simple low-cost and no-cost actions everyone can take to conserve natural resources and
promote the health of our environment.” Sched-uled to be issued this month (May 2012) are “four colorful stamps featuring a different kind of bike and rider: a young child just learning to ride with
training wheels, a commuter pedaling to work, a road racer intent on the finish line, and an airborne BMX rider.”
