Greetings all from the Peruvian Amazon!

After missing most of this month due to the lack of a bike while traveling abroad, I've procured one on loan. The seat is about 3" too low, and those knobby tires make funny noises on the pavement, and the front wheel isn't trued so it squeals. In other words, NO WORRIES. 

My colleague who loaned the bike is spearheading a nascent bike culture here in Puerto Maldonado. For now suffice it to say that bicyclists rate somewhere just above street dogs in the pecking order on the road. But with every new cyclist, things get better. LIFE IS GOOD. 

SO I RODE YESTERDAY. How I've missed being on a bike! WOO-HOO! 

I forgot to hydrate, and the Amazon sun is serious business even compared to Florida in July. But then I RECORDED IT! That's the EASY part... 

And I RODE AGAIN TODAY. I RECORDED THAT TOO! ODE TO JOY! 

Appreciate what you have! Viva the GCC in the 2015 National Bike Challenge! See you all at the party!

Stephen Perz



On Monday, July 20, 2015 12:01 AM, Jayson O'Mahoney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


Hi everyone,

Whether you know it or not, the Gainesville Cycling Club is still actively involved in the National Bike Challenge - http://nationalbikechallenge.org

While yours truly has been remiss with team motivation for 2015, this hasn't stopped people such as Lambert Vaes, Scott Erker, Jodi Schulz, Larry Pahman and so many others, from continuing with the club's participation in the 2015 challenge.

Unfortunately, the GCC is not enjoying the dominating lead it had last year over the teams in second and third place. At the time of writing, the GCC holds a very slender lead over a team from Washington D.C. - a team that is comprised of two teams - such is the desire for the Washington D.C. combined team to crush the humble GCC team.

The Washington D.C. team is motivated, to the point of making fancy graphs to plot their progress vs the GCC, and talking rubbish on their forum. Sample comments from the BikeArlingtonForum.com

"It's hotter here AND we have hills. Gainseville=slackers." by Cyclingfool.

"Can't we get that first place rider who is putting in something like 75,000 miles this year to join our team. We can offer him cool Bike Arlington Swag right?" by Mikey.

What is the GCC going to do about this?

1. During this Sunday's GCC board meeting, we decided there will be a VICTORY PARTY, assuming we win :). We would like to recognize members who participated in the challenge, in particular those who contributed by logging consistent miles, big or small - remember, ONE MILE A DAY is what counts - consistency.

Details to follow soon, but this event will likely involve bikes and beer, and possibly some other rewards. More on this later.

2. The club will hold a social bike ride / beer socialization get together shortly at one of the local Gainesville breweries. We'd like to get as many riders to attend as possible - ride some miles (and log them), followed by chit chat and beers post ride - similar to what happened at the Sportody Bikes and Beers event last Tuesday.

3. We'd like to see the GCC win the Teams title for the 3rd year running. Without club members contributing, that is not possible. Right now, we have 383 riders on our team. Yet, only 262 members have logged mileage for the challenge period, several of whom haven't logged miles in two months. We have 1,000+ members in the club - we'd like to see more participation.

4. Please consider signing up for the challenge and joining GCC's team at http://nationalbikechallenge.org - once completed, goto My Account, Edit Profile, find the Teams section, and join the Gainesville Cycling Club Team. If you're using an app such as Strava, Endomondo, MapMyRide or Moves, you can easily sync your NBC account to the app, which makes logging miles for the GCC a whole lot easier.

5. Miles from May 1, 2015 count!  One mile per day = 20 points. Every mile after that is worth one point.

Expect future emails with challenge statistics and motivation to keep everyone in the club fired up for winning the 2015 National Mileage Challenge!

If you have any questions or comments, please reply directly to this email.

Thanks for reading.

Jayson
GCC El Presidente
To unsubscribe from GCCMail, please go to http://gccfla.org/. Sign in to the Members Area, go to the "Me" page, "About Me" box, and click the Unsubscribe button in the Email section. There are also links in the headers of this message that you can use if you know how to access them.