Article by Edmund West

Cyclists are like a family where, to quote the Eagles, Hotel California, ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave’.

It’s important to get back to the very simple essence of the club. The essence of the club is rides and ride leaders, because without ride leaders putting rides on the calendar, the club is nothing.

And the essence of rides with the club is very simple. You meet at a central location, cycle up a trail or road together for the day or a multi day ride then all go home. We encourage ride leaders to focus on the ride that they want to do.

This club is about any member being a ride leader.

If you’re an aspiring new ride leader, contact a friend or even a few friends when you’ve got a plan for a ride, then post your ride on Meetup.

A checklist and more info for ride leaders is on the club website here.

There’s plenty of support out there to help you post your first Meetup ride — talk to the Rides Secretary as a starting point via rides@mbtc.org.au 

A determined sub-committee turned detective to track down past
members for a celebration to remember.

On 18 November, 131 past and current members gathered at the Furlan Club in
Thornbury, including 22 out of 28 Club Presidents.

Thank you to organiser Judy Beswick for this article

It took a lot of work tracking down old members, a lot of emails on the database had changed over the years.

But the word spread and the list grew. Fred Surr, Life Member did us the honour of being
the MC for the day.

We had five speakers –Tony Kyne, Charlie Farren, Gael Reid, Gail Crennan and
Ian Clarke.

All gave wonderful and enlightening speeches about their time and experience at the club, painting a picture of how MBTC has evolved.

Thank you to Christopher for wonderful photography: view photos here. (download link 5281)

We had a number of people who travelled a long way just to be at the 50th. Special mention goes out to Sally Dillon & Peter Hines who came from Brisbane, Natalie Schroeder & Scott Rickard from Canberra, and others who travelled a long way by car.

It truly shows the commitment people have towards the club.

The Furlan Club was a perfect venue, with plenty of room for people to mingle. The food was excellent and we loved the 50th Anniversary cake.

Since the event, we have received a number of praises on how the day went
and how good it was to catch up with old friends.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the sub-committee for all their
hard work with the organisation.

The sub-committee consisted of Peter Signorini, Walter Medenbach, Vera Slota, Chris Woods and myself.

Judy Beswick