President's Report 2013
by Ryan Golbeck

Here's our out-going club President's report looking back at the 2013 season, and forward to 2014. It was presented at the October 6 Annual General Meeting by in-coming President Andy Reimer. (Ryan was out of town, and was unable to attend the AGM.) EF

Although this is a relatively quiet year with no 1200 we've had some big changes. After an extraordinary general meeting earlier in the year, we'll be voting at this AGM for the first time allowing remote ballots. This required us to start nominations and the election process sooner than in the past, and although there were more positions than candidates, we ran the voting process anyway so that members could get a feel for it. This will allow members who are not able to make it to the AGM to have a say in the executive of the club.

Thanks to all who made it to the general meeting to vote on allowing the club to conduct executive elections by mail!

Another big step this year was coming up with some initial club branding. This included some consistent colours and logos, as well as socks, jersies and even mudflaps using this new branding. Hopefully this initiative will make BC Randonneurs more identifiable when on, and off, the road in the future by giving the club a consistent look. Thanks to Chris Cullum for spear heading this.

And although we are in a hump year between PBPs, we still had 8 rookie super randonneurs this year, down from 9 last year. But 42 total super randonneurs, down from 46 last year. Congratulations to Dave Campbell, Eric Guillemot, Malou Ignacio, Dave King, Yutaka Moriwaki, Patricia Plante, David Robertson, and Michael Tilitzky for their first super randonneur in BC.

We've also opened up membership registration online this year, which results in an extremely high membership count this year of 312! There were 115 new members this year of which 53 started a brevet. This is a great increase in membership and riders!

As usual, many common reports can be looked up on our database website which is updated automatically as brevets are ridden and new results come in.

Next year will be a great year with the brevet schedules being finalized. And planning for the quadrennial Vanisle 1200 is well underway. Thanks to Steve Mahovlic for taking this one on!

We have heard this year from ACP that PBP 2015 will use a similar pre-registration system as in 2011. That is, the longer a ride you complete in 2014, the earlier pre-registration you will have for PBP 2015. However, there will no longer be by-country quotas. So any members intending to ride PBP in 2015 would be advised to ride at least a super randonneur next year, and an ultra if possible. We'll keep the membership advised as we get more information about the next PBP.

I'll let regional coordinators give reports on the great rides we had in each region.

And finally, I'd like to thank all the volunteers this year, from those of you staffing controls, contributing to brevets in other ways and organizing events. Without these volunteers we would not be able to have such a full schedule. I'd also like to thank everyone who's volunteered in other ways, such as processing brevet results, maintaining the website, and serving on the executive, and all out going members of the executive.

November 2, 2013