You know how the saying goes – you can’t please all of the people all of the time.  Well we risk taking this to the next level by ensuring that we don’t please some of the people any of the time.  My point relates to social rides, group rides or whatever the latest politically correct, hazard and risk assessed, safety manager-approved term is. I am told that the best games are of squash are had when players are evenly matched.  This analogy kind-of works for biking too – although no inference of competition is intended. 

Back to the point - social rides - or whatever.  We welcome “all of the people” to all rides, which at face value seems like a good thing, but actually it’s not. Let’s go off on a membership tangent now.  As a club committed to furthering road safety, we need a balance of enthusiastic membership.  Without enthusiastic members the club dies and there is at least one example of a local club with similar aims to ours where exactly that happened.  So what does having “a balance of enthusiastic members” imply? 

I reckon it means meeting the needs of Associates and Green Badge holders.  For Associates, we have our excellent team of Observers and a selection of runs designed to meet their needs.  These are referred to as first timer runs or leisurely/moderate paced runs.  It should be said that a number of Green Badge holders enjoy these runs too. However there are a number of long-standing members who want to exercise their advanced skills by riding at an advanced pace with bikers they know and trust. 

Returning to the squash analogy, they want to ride with people of similar ability so that they can make the overtakes and enjoy the corners without being startled, when committed to a pace and line, by a brake light coming on mid-corner from the bike in front. There’s another problem with some of the advanced pace rides of late; it’s not always made clear what advanced pace actually means.  The consequence of not being explicit about the riding standard required is a big mix of riding abilities.  In the blink of an eye an advanced pace ride end up being leisurely and frustrating since the least skilled rider tends to dictate the pace. So this is the message SAM, keep up the excellent work with new members but please plan more advanced pace rides and make it clear that the ride is for Green Badge holders only.  No exceptions!  T

Disclaimer:  Grumpy Old Biker is a periodic column written for the SAM newsletter.  It is highly unlikely that the views expressed here are in any way representative of the IAM or SAM.