Nick,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I appreciate and understand the points that you have made. I think that for me I will just have to bite the bullet and go for either a medium or long ride which every is the soonest on the ride calendar. Thanks anyway. Paul

--- On Mon, 7/28/08, ndcanham <ndcanham@...> wrote:

From: ndcanham <ndcanham@...>
Subject: [cyclecardiff] Re: New Cyclists
To: cyclecardiff@...
Date: Monday, July 28, 2008, 9:22 AM

Paul

There are a number of points here.

In terms of how easy they are or aren't, I'm not sure how much easier
we could make them. We could do a lap or two of Bute Park, but people
can do this for themselves, and it has little motivational or social
value. I'm sure we'd also get an even smaller turn-out since none of
our regulars would show up.

Riding to Forest Farm, Gelynis Farm, or the Norwegian Church is really
about as easy as it gets: under 10 miles, flat, and largely traffic-free.

One of the group's aims is to promote cycling, but I wouldn't go so
far as to say that our core aim is to promote cycling to the less
experienced; it just happens to be among the things that we do.
Personally, I'm proud of the fact that we offer easy rides at all. I
enjoy leading the shorter rides, but I wouldn't want to devote more
than a handful of my Sundays in a year to these because making time to
enjoy cycling for myself is also important to me. We have a team of
seven or so regular ride leaders, and a smaller group again who choose
to regularly offer the easy rides. We try to make sure that there is
an easy ride each month, but without more people offering their time
to lead much easier rides than they would normally undertake, we can't
put more of them in the calendar.

In brief, the easy rides are there and they're available to those who
want to take the opportunity. Ultimately, I think we offer as many as
we can without turning them into an onerous task for ourselves.

--- In cyclecardiff@ yahoogroups. co.uk, Paul Stacey <paulstacey16@ ...>
wrote:
>
> I really do think that you have missed the point in all this discussion.
>
> Can I first say that from what I've read and the tone in which it
has been written that the group has not been criticised for any
failure on its part. Some of the comments about the website are
opinions and I think anybody that has looked fully at the website and
the history of the variety of the rides could only come to the
conclusion that the group offers a wide range of rides throughout the
year.
>
> The message that people like myself are trying to put across is that
there are not enough easy rides to satisfy the needs of us as
individuals looking to join the group. I can only say that having not
joined the group is based solely on the fact that I am uncertain about
being capable of completing some of the long rides based simply upon
the lack of experience of actually doing such a long ride.
>
> Undestanding that the lack of experience is a problem for new
members could well explain why the easy rides are undersubscribed
>