Newsletter - 2003 Archive

BC Randonneurs Cycling Club

Next--->   

It had to happen; more volunteers than riders! Ted Milner's unfortunate family crisis gave him no option but to drop the organisation of the Summer 600 after he had designed a new compilation of local(?) roads.

Laidlaw asked a good question; "Why start in the Lougheed Mall parking lot when there was a perfectly good Tim Horton's just round the corner on North Road? We didn't expect more than 10 riders so there were only 20 route sheets and control cards to waste.

By 06:00 on the morning of Saturday August 9th five riders had shown up; John Campbell from Port Orchard, Ken Bonner, Siggy Palme, Kevin Bruce and Phil Rumming. The last 2 chose a difficult route for their first 600.

Controls; Mission, 49, Dogwood 142, Husky at West Hope 165, Manning Park 238, Princeton 305, Manning Park 372, Hope 438, Harrison Hot Springs 481, Chilliwack 509, Mission 557 and finish Coquitlam side of North Road 608.

Coming late in the event, Harrison would need staffing and before Ted's crisis Bridge and Harrington had volunteered for that extended over night job. There was no way anyone would threaten the opening time of 20:50 so it was decided to stay home until Caton or Shackleford phoned from Manning Park Lodge to say the first rider had left and was heading down to Hope and thus to Harrison.

After about 20 minutes sleep Bridge receives the call at about 23:45, gets dressed and at about 00:10 set out with Harrington for Harrison. The call also reported that Rumming had desisted at Hope and that the remaining 4 were spread out by 3 hours. If the situation had been given more thought then it would have been seen that another 2 hours sleep could have been had. Bridge and Harrington were on station at about 01:55 and Bonner turned up at 04:29!

At 09:19 Palme turned up. Shackleford and Caton arrived fresh from a comfortable night in MPL together with Campbell who had desisted at Princeton.

Having existed on catnaps through the night Bridge and Harrington left Bruce to get his control at the Tempo gas station and set off for home about 10:00. On the way home Harrington pointed out to the Route Coordinator that there was 1.6 km of illegal road in the route. The stretch of joint route of 7 east/9 south is used 3 times. But if we consider that it is route 7 east first time, 7 west second time and 9 south third time we don't have a problem!

Given the proximity to "PBP" it is to be hoped the hopefully threr riders who finished this 600 will do their utmost to get their control cards to the Data Base Manager asap.

_