IMPORTANT NOTICE: FLASHBACK – Instead of riding on the third Saturday this month, we've planned a group picnic on the fourth Saturday (this weekend: 7/27) to acknowledge the birthdays of VCRRians born during this month (although an embarrassing number of decades ago). The picnic site will be Crescent Park in the Riverpark tract of northwest Oxnard, located at the northeast end of Oxnard Boulevard, about a mile from the US-101 exits. If you intend to ride with the group, please plan to meet at about 9:30, planning to pedal (or motor) away around 10AM. Most of the cyclists will take a short ride (about 15 miles), beginning with a loop around the newly formed lakes nearby. Other riders may opt to log a few more miles before lunch. The post-ride plan is to get together again, maybe with some non-riders at about 1PM for a picnic lunch in the park. Kay and I will provide salads, sandwich materials, chips, sodas and something sweet to cap it off. IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY RSVP'D FOR THIS PICNIC, PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS UPDATE BY EMAIL, TEXT OR VOICE PHONE BY FRIDAY MORNING SO THAT WE CAN ESTIMATE THE NUMBER OF FOLKS FOR LUNCH!
REMINDER: A small number of us have been meeting fairly regularly to ride together on 'off weekends' and during the week. We're always thrilled to have others join us for these almost impromptu excursions, and if you're interested, please ping me or one of the other regular attendees to coordinate times and venues. We're hoping that everyone who can will join us on one of our VCRR Group Rides this year. Please ping me if you need more info or would like contact info to coordinate a ride with anyone else that you'd like to invite.
This is a brief listing of preliminary plans for upcoming rides:
In May we took advantage of a last chance to ride from Pleasant Valley Fields to one of our favorite buffet brunch spots at CSUCI's Islands Cafe, with an up-and-down cruise of Calleguas Creek for added mileage. On the Third Saturday we disguised ourselves as giant bees, complete with matching yellow and black striped shirts, yellow helmets with antennae, oversized insect eye glasses and colorful hummingbird themed windsocks to participate in the Polliator Palooza at Barranca Vista Park. Our quartet of unusual trikes was a big hit at the event. We also had so much FUN that we did a repeat performance at the Insect Festival in June, and the Bee Team will almost surely be part of our ride schedule in the future.
For our final VCRR Group Ride of the Spring, we hosted a visiting group of trikeys: BACK, the Bent Afficionado Club of Kern, from Bakersfield, who made a special trip to join with us for a ride from Marina Park in Ventura up the coast. This ride had the highest turnout of the year so far, with 21 cyclists in all. Everyone had a great time before we splintered on the return to Ventura, with about half the group opting for lunch at Topper's Pizza.
November/December 2023: Our First Saturday ride last month started from Pitts Ranch Park. We separated into two small groups, one tackling the steep climbs and zooming downhills of the Mission Hills area before regrouping at the Village Sports Park and continuing on to the CSUCI campus. We had a great brunch at the Islands Cafe, then wrapped up the day with a quick return to the park in great Autumn weather. On the rain-dampened Third Saturday we met for another (in?)famous Bad Weather Brunch at Main Street Restaurant. Although no one has had a non-trivial accident on our group rides for years, our last ride in November ended with an injury crash at a dangerous dead end of the levee trail in Fillmore. Sadly, that was also the second serious accident for the group that week as one of the riders collided with a car on his way to a ride start. Several of us have continued to get together for two or three rides each week, taking full advantage of our near-ideal Autumn weather to enjoy cycling with a variety of venues and velocities. Our Third Saturday VCRR Group Ride of December started in the Pierpont area near the Ventura Marina; five of us rode tadpole trikes up the coast to the Seacliff Fire Station on another almost ideal day for an Autumn trike ride.
We are semi-desperately looking for suggestions for new, different or retro/classic VCRR Group Rides for this year, either in person, by phone or email. We're also very eager to expand the number of cyclists to participate in any of the rides we're planning over the next year. If you newbies or folks who haven't ridden with the group for a while need help or more information for getting to any of our rides, please email or phone me. Our home phone number – usually the best way to talk to us – is 805-981-0339. If we're not home you can also try my cell phone: 805-612-7662. Text messages will not work on our home phone, and are slightly discouraged for the cell phone. Don't even think about Facebook or Twitter! For convenience my email link is: