Only two people showed up for this Saturday's club ride. Perhaps the timing, meeting place, or

method of communicating MIVA activities needs modifying. If anyone has suggestions as to how to make these rides more appealing, please email Peter at pakamac@gmail.com.

As one of the participants said: the club ride is probably the most enjoyable form of cycling. Racing and other competitive riding is great in its own way but the club ride gives more satisfaction and the chance to socialise with other cyclists.

There are still inquiries about regular club rides. MIVA has a ride meeting at Java Expressions at Northfield and Bowen, 9am on Saturdays and heading south towards Chemainus. The club is still looking for regular runs leader(s) to head up these rides. The job would be to take into account the varying abilities , fitness level, time available of participants and to keep the group together or suggest extra loop(s) for the fit, feisty and faster riders.

MIVA now has fifty members! not bad for a little club that only started this year. If all our members show up for a time trial, we will need a second time keeper so I'm willing to train anyone who is interested in the role. If all the members show up for a criterium, I will need someone with younger eyes to sort out a bunch finish!

Russ Hay rider, Emile de Rosnay again showed his class by winning tonight's 15km time trial on the Nanaimo River Road. Conditions were near-perfect untril about ten minutes before the start but then the temperature dropped several degrees and a cold wind arose, slowing most of the riders including Emile. Pro City Racing's James Cameron however, managed to improve slightly and only missed out on beating de Rosnay by 23 seconds.

In the women's category, last year's series winner, Janna Gillick, riding her first race this season, won handily in 26' 31" - way off her best time but sufficient to beat the other competitors by over two minutes. Charlene Hay did improve her own best time significantly to beat 3rd place finisher, Rose Houle by just 12 seconds.

Youth rider, Brodie Hay, also posted his best time to date improving by over a minute on last week's effort.

Starting next week, both the Tuesday criteriums and the Thursday time trials will begin at 7.00pm.

Here is an article from the Cycling 101 section of a Portland newspaper on "drunk  while cycling" stats.  Makes for an interesting, if somewhat sobering, read.