Hello fellow members of the CMBC!

As the Canterbury Mountain Bike Club’s new president, I would like to update you with what’s going on with your club.

Firstly welcome to our fabulous new website. Thank you very much Bryan Muir for creating this.

We now also have a new members only Facebook page. This has been set up to communicate events with members more effectively, so hopefully we can get more people attending club rides.

I’d really like your feedback on the website, Facebook page and any other suggestions of what we can do to get you out on more rides. (Chocolate fish on fishing rods?).

As always it would be great to see more people interested in ride leading, you don’t have to be an expert rider yourself, just be willing to organise people. New ride leaders means we can offer more variety of tracks and track grades as club rides.

We currently have 78 Members! Thank you all for joining. It would be great to further increase numbers, so please pass on to any bikers you meet on your rides what we can offer them and what good we do for our community.

We aim to donate at least a third of membership fees to the mountain bike community each year. If you have any suggestions where this support would be of benefit let the committee know.

We’d like to see the club becoming more of a voice for our sport and track development. Advocacy plays a big role in this, contact us if you know of a project you think we could help with.

If you have attended any of the club rides, thanks for coming along. (If you have any good photos from club rides this year, please feel free to post them up onto the club FaceBook page!)

There are already lots of rides planned to look forward to in the next 3 months; Port hills – Halswell to Taylors mistake, a ride with the North Canterbury mt bike club, a Twizel Labour weekend trip, 2 further local Christchurch rides, Craigieburn ride to either trig M or the Hogs back, overnight camping at Lake Taylor as a Christmas get together and the first ride of 2017 out to the Packhorse hut track. (Please always check Facebook for the most up to date event info as rides may be changed due to weather/track conditions).

Off the tracks we’re currently working on improving the way we manage memberships and membership payments. We’d like for new members to be able to join the club immediately at any time of year and for payments to be direct from this website. We aim for this to be in place before the New Year.

We’re also working on setting the club up as an incorporated/not for profit society so we can re-affiliate with bike NZ, which will cover us with liability insurance for our club rides.  We’re getting Club tee shirts printed, perhaps an idea for a Christmas present for someone?

“Life’s not always uphill”

Thanks,

Hannah – Club President.