2015 New Year's Day Populaire - An invitation
by Mike Croy

Seasons greetings from Team Croy!

Brynne, Steven and I would like to invite everyone to join us for the New years day Populaire. This years edition has a new start and finish location which will be the Crooked Goose Bistro, which is located at the intersection of Wilkinson, Interurban and Helmecken and the address is 4136 Wilkinson Rd.

The ride as always will be a casual everyone welcome low key affair with the emphasis being placed on coming out to enjoy a pleasant morning on the bike in the company of other like minded riders as well as shake some of the New Years Eve rust off and start the new year on the right foot. We will ensure to make the ride fairly scenic while taking in many low travelled roads and try to put a few new areas in to keep people interested.

The Crooked Bistro is a family friendly restaurant that is centrally located in Saanich and kids are welcome for sure! They seem to have a great looking menu that will cater to many different tastes and dietary needs. They also serve libations of a malty nature if that may be of interest to you as well as fermented grape drinks. The staff is excited about hosting our ride and I am looking forward to their hospitality.

Here is the bistros website if you are interested and wish to spend some time looking in advance of the event.
http://crookedgoosebistro.ca/

The only thing I might see being a small issue here for the day of the event will be parking as they have a somewhat smaller parking lot. If possible it would be preferable to arrive by bicycle but if you are going to drive please be considerate and park on the very outskirts of the lot or across the street in the mac's/co-op parking lot.

As always there will be a very nice pin for all participants and we look forward to seeing you on the day of the event. The route for the ride will be similar to what it has been in the last few years but we will release the finalized route after we pre-ride in the next couple of weeks. We will be aiming to keep the distance to somewhere between 50 and 60 km's and with not too many hills.
We will be at the Goose setting up at 9 am outside on New Years as the bistro wont open until 10 am. If anyone needs it there are washrooms located across the street at the 24 hour Mac's store.

We hope you will join us again this year or consider giving the ride a shot as maybe your first rando ride? If you have any questions feel free to contact either Brynne or myself as we would be very happy to answer your questions.

Cheers

Mike, Brynne and Steven Croy

December 18, 2014