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Next Sunday Group Ride

All Club group rides remain suspended due to Covid-19.
Be safe and ride solo or in family groups.

Board Meeting

Next virtual meeting early February. Contact Hans or Jim if you'd like to receive the link to join.

Spaghetti 100

Unfortunatelly we'd have to cancel the 2020 Spaghetti100 due to Covid-19. Look for a new date in Oct/Nov 2021

Kids on Bikes

With the schools closed, our Kids on Bikes program is paused.

Group Rides remain cancelled

While Florida is opening up again, the club leadership has decided to not restart our regular group club rides at least until July 1st. When we posted draft group ride rules aimed at limiting the risk of transmission and based on the recommendations by USA Cycling and their chief medical officer, the response has been mixed. The USA cycling guidelines call for a distance of 4 bike lengths when wearing a mask or 8 bike lengths when not wearing a mask when riding in a group with people you do not necessarily know. The general feeling seems to be that this is either not really a social group ride, and increases risks related to passing motorized vehicles. Considering also the great economic sacrifices related to Covid19 by many of our fellow citizens and businesses, and the recent increase in the number of new infections, we feel that it is not advisable nor responsible to restart group rides at this time.

Of course, for our physical and mental health, and our immune system, we should keep exercising. Do do this safely, the main rules are simple: Ride solo. Avoid busy areas. Do not ride when sick. A good guideline to read is "How to Ride Safely During Coronavirus Concerns" by Jordan Smith in Bicycling magazine.

If you're looking for outside challenges, you can try to improve your time, or your buddy's time, on Stava sections. Also with Garmin Visual Partner, you can ride against yourself on courses you've ridden previously. You can also exchange .fit files on Garmin Connect or RideWithGPS and load these as courses on your Garmin to ride against your friends' rides (see Solo Rides). Just ride and have some fun in these difficult times.

Solo Rides to consider.

Under the 'Rides' menu tab, you can find a variety of ride maps and routes for you to ride solo or with members of your household. There is also a new option 'SOLO Rides', which include .fit files, which is the current standard for Garmin and other devices, Loading these on your Garmin device allows you to race/ride against the original rider that contributed these rides, using the Virtual Partner option that is available on a variety of GPS cycling computers. Consider to contribute some of your own rides to enhance this small collection. Note that you have to be member to download these files and most of the posted routes. Keep riding!

Capital City Cyclists suspends all group ride activity until further notice

It is with regret that we suspend all club ride activity. Capital City Cyclists continues to closely monitor developments regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Following the guidelines from USA Cycling we will suspend all group ride activity until May 31.

We urge all of our members to stay in contact with their friends and family and be supportive during this trying time. We also urge all of you to be aware of the changing landscape related to COVID-19 and to understand the important preventative practices that may minimize your and your loved ones exposure.

Note that you can still exercise on your bike, alone or with your family. There are a few resources to check out:
Riding safely during coronavirus concerns
Support your Local Bike Shops
Cycling and Coronavirus (British cycling weekly)
Work From Home tips (by Primal)
Being Active during COVID19 (Strava)

NoGroupRiding

Please be safe and healthy, and we hope to be riding together with you all very soon.

Board of DIrectors of Capital City Cyclists

Welcome to Capital City Cyclists, a recreational bike club and 501(c)3 non-profit bicycle advocacy organization for the Florida Capital region.

Bikelanes to be eliminated on Railroad Avenue?

Johan van Tol - 2/18/2020

At the bicycle workgroup meeting Feb 10, the city showed the plans for Railroad avenue between Gaines St and FAMU Way. This project has funds for construction in the city's capital improvement program in 2021 and 2022.
The thinking is to create a 12' multi-use trail on the west side of the road, a median, a greenery strip separating the trail and sidewalks from the road, but no more bike lanes. The road would be 2-laned more or less like Gaines St. What would be helpful for trail safety is that some left turns are eliminated (if the affected businesses do not complain about that too loudly), which would be helpful for trail users. However there are still quite a few business entrances and side roads that provide conflict points for those on the multi-use trail.
Click here for a higher resolution pdf version of the image below.

RailRdAve_2020Design

We are concerned about cyclist safety. We know that riding on the sidewalk is dangerous, with up to 2 times more crashes when riding with the flow of traffic, and up to 4 times more crashes when riding the sidewalk against the flow of traffic. This is a short stretch of multi-use trail that will cross a gas-station entrance, a hotel entrance, 2 side roads, the train station entrance, a dentist entrance, all with a new hotel in construction. The trail will also not provide a good connection to the bike lanes north of Gaines St. From the designs we've seen, the roads will have sharrows, but no space to pass, creating an uncomfortable situation for cyclists as well as drivers using the lane. Please let us know what you're thoughts are (email hans@cccyclists.org) while we try to gather more details about the plans and try to formulate the official club position on the proposed changes to Railroad Ave.

Kids On Bikes at Hartsfield Elementary in February

Johan van Tol - 2/7/2020

The Kids on Bikes Trailer is at Hartsfield Elementary this month, being used in the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Curriculum at our local elementary schools. Capital City Cyclists provide the bikes and accessories like traffic signs, while the teachers teach the kids the curriculum. These teachers could use some help from volunteers to get the bikes ready for the kids, getting them fitted with helmets, setting up the course, etc. Also at the end of the course, the kids are taken on a community/gruaduation ride on real roads in the neighborhood with help of the Tallahassee Police Department. That's great fun to watch or help out with. If you are interested in providing some of your time and help during the course or the graduation ride, please contact Kyle Root (kroot@wellflorida.org).

New 2020 Officers elected at Christmas Party

Johan van Tol - 12/17/2019

For a third year in a row, Susan Blessing and Kevin Sossong made their home a wonderful venue for the annual holiday party. The many members present enjoyed great food, plenty of drinks, and good conversations. This time Kyle Root of gave a short presentation about the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program, which is funded by FDOT and administered by the University of Florida. Leon county is one of poster child counties for this program, in no small part due to the Kids on Bikes program of Capital City Cyclists. This program reaches thousands of kids, teaching them to ride a bike and how to ride safely in trafffic. This program is always in need of volunteers to help the PE teachers run their classes. If you are interested in helping out or want to learn more, please contact Kyle (KRoot@WellFlorida.org).

Traditionally the holiday party also features the election for the officers of the board. This year there were 4 courageous volunteers to head up the CCC board in 2020, and all four were elected unanimously by those present. After several years as vice-president, Jim Mann will take over as president. Jane Fletcher will continue another year as club secretary, while Kelly Beacher will come back as treasurer. Dan Thompson will come on board as vice-president. Complementing the board will be Hans van Tol as past president and webmaster, Karen Loewen as social media director, and Joe Barnett as advocacy chair.
Many thanks go to Sara Dugger and Marvin (Marv) Rubenstein who will be rotating off the board. Sara was our 2019 Treasurer, whil Marv has been in charge of the membership for many, many years, Please thank them for dedicating so much of their scarce free time volunteering for our club.

Sometimes it's good to complain !

Lights that don't turn green for you? Often the in-pavement detection loop does not detect you, either because the sensitivity is set too low, or you do not know where the sweetspot is for the loop to detect your rims.
Put your frustration into a citizen complaint on DigiTally. That'll help things to change! We really would like to see better Bicycle Detection