Letter from Bill to the Membership
Fellow DC Randonneurs,
Thank you for your vote of confidence in approving my nomination to be our new RBA. It is an honor coming from such an accomplished and experienced group, and I hope that I can live up to your expectations. Furthermore, I will need your help in the coming months, since I only accepted the position knowing that I could draw on the incredible depth of talent that resides in the club.
I have nearly completed the RBA application (with many helpful suggestions from Lynn Kristianson) and hope to have it submitted this week. As we have said before, approval by RUSA is not a foregone conclusion, but we are quite hopeful. And if the application is approved, DC Randonneurs brevet schedule will be back in action very quickly. We will submit three RUSA brevets with the application, to occur in late May, July, and September. And we are also planning an active fall, possibly including a RUSA 300K, a set of brevets arranged around the 10th anniversary of RUSA, and/or a Dart. Finally, we are planning on a full ACP series next spring. If you have something special that you would like to see, please let me know about it.
I would like to publicly thank the other board members Steve Ashurst, Nick Bull, Bill Clayton, Paul Donaldson, and Chris Mento for investing so much time over the past few months as we worked through the serious issues facing the club. Our new President, Nick, has been a dynamo, and Secretary Steve has gone way beyond the call of duty setting up two separate electronic elections.
In my RBA application, I said that I viewed success as an RBA from the point of view of a rider in the club. If he or she sees a ride schedule that is posted well in advance, feels welcome at the rides, thinks the routes are safe and scenic, and wants to look back at the web site a few days after each ride to read the ride summary and check out the results to see how their friends did, that would be success. And hopefully, that’s what will happen. But I assure you that I will willingly transfer the RBA position AND (if RUSA approves) the brevet schedule to a new RBA if the board and members ever decide that would be best for the club.
Bill Beck