President's Column
I hope all of the club members are having an exceptional new year and are as excited as we are at the upcoming riding season. I was quite surprised and thankful that Martha asked Margot and I to be the new club co-presidents. I can assure you that we will both work hard to make this year a great cycling year for the club and the Paducah area. We have been living in Paducah for 8 years now (originally from northern Illinois) and have grown quite fond of the area and the people, not to mention some great cycling roads. We hope to make Paducah even more bicycle friendly and look forward seeing many more people out on the road in the future.

We have been discussing a few ways to make the club more accessible to all cyclists, both those who are training hard to get faster and fitter, or those recreational riders who just want a group of people to socialize with. One idea is to continue with the weekday rides, but have an 'A' and 'B' group. 'A' group would be for the fast training riders and 'B' group for the more recreational riders. We are also going to try to make the club more accessible for people so they can get in touch with us and get updates regularly. The website will be updated with event dates as they are announced and we will continue posting to the facebook group. I have also set up a Flickr group for the club entitled "Chain Reaction Cycling Club." It is a great way to show the fellow club members your fun ride photos and it is free to browse, join and upload photos. It will be linked from the website and also the facebook page. I encourage anybody to share a great ride, pictures or story. Speaking as someone who is technologically inept, I find the format of Flickr to be quite easy to use, so please don't shy away from sharing your photos.

We have more plans in the works and I will be updating them in future newsletters and online so please stay tuned. Oh yeah, the club has a new email now, fairly easy to remember - crccpaducah@gmail.com. If you need to get in touch with me, share a story, or have any suggestions, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email.

Thanks so much, Ryan Merrill