The Arboretum Shopping Center in South Barrington is located on Higgins Road (U.S. Rte.#72 on the north side of the street & between Bartlett Road & U.S. Rte.#59. just north of the exit off of the I-#90 interstate to Rockford.  The store itself is located right next to the LL Beam store.  Our contact there is Nancy.

Also, on Thursday, November 19th at 7:00pm, please join the Pearl Izumi staff for a free evening workshop highlighting cold weather cycling and running gear. Enjoy refreshments with other CATS and AHBC members and learn what you need to know to keep cycling and running all year long.

Pearl Izumi Factory Store
100 W Higgins Rd.
South Barrington, IL 60010
847-836-0101

RIDE TIME          10.30 A. M.

CHILI ONLY          1:00 P. M.

WHERE          TOM & SHERRY MASTERS
302 E. WILLOW ROAD
Inverness, IL 60010

R.S.V.P.          YES,      AT     847-358-7797

WHAT DO I BRING??          Most of you will bring chili but a few of you may wish to bring something else, (read as dessert).  Ask Tom or Sherry  when you RSVP.  Also if you are bringing a special type of chili (read as HOT or veggie, etc.), be sure to identify that to us as well.  All normal chili will be combined into one big pot.
Beverages, crackers, cheese, etc. will be provided.

AS FOR THE RIDE          We’ve been known to ride in just about anything, like cold, light mist, & flakes of snow so dress accordingly & we hold the chili supper regardless of the weather. There are a number of different routes, depending on the weather to choose from & they all end up at the PUMPKIN FARM which has a children’s spook house, petting zoo, costume & decorations outlet, plus a farm market with gourds, corn, apples, cider, etc. (oh and pumpkins too)  They also have apple cider donuts which are GREAT, at least today they were!!!
SEE YOU HERE!!          REMEMBER TO RSVP

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Bob Duncan
(630) 904-9895

Start time: 9:00 AM

RSVP: Carole and Barry Cohen, 847-459-7640 or e-mail barry.cohen@comcast.net.

The ride will start at our Buffalo Grove home and include:

• (4) Mileage Options: 40, 32 miles, or 25 miles, which will take you over mostly lightly traveled roads past some very beautiful homes, horse farms and wooded areas in Long Grove, and the Barringtons. This is generally lightly rolling terrain with a few hills. Also if the ride is very hot we will be doing a Heat Index 16 mile option.

• Sustenance: There is a rest-stop in downtown Barrington and you’re invited to join us after the ride for a barbecue and cooling your feet in the 6 foot wide (not deep) kiddy pool on the Cohen’s deck (please RSVP). If you are not riding feel free to join us for the party.

Directions to the ride:

We will start from the Cohen’s at

891 Indian Spring Lane

Buffalo Grove, IL 60089

847-459-7640

Feel free to park on the street. We’re 5 minutes from Route 53 and Lake-Cook Road or 10 minutes from the Deerfield Road Exit of I 94. Call if you’d like detailed directions (Maps at Web Site).

Get ready for triple the fun and triple the food with three West Suburban Bike and Dine events this summer. The West Suburban Bike and Dine, organized by the Active Transportation Alliance, is a chance to tour the sights of the western suburbs on bike while sampling from local eateries.

The annual ride has become so popular that three separate events are scheduled this year on July 18, August 8, and September 26. Restaurants will include Vie, Grapevine and Ballydoyle Irish Pub. Details are available online at www.activetrans.org/bikeanddine.

Each ride is a total of about 20 miles, and the pace is a leisurely 10-12 mph. Registration is open for one, two or all three events. Each ride is $50 or $45 for Active Trans members. Space is limited. Register online at www.activetrans.org/bikeanddine or call 312.427.3325.

• July 18, 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
  Begin and end at the south entrance of the Brookfield Zoo, 3300 Golf Road in Brookfield
  Riders will dine at Grapevine and Wishbone and have dessert at the Riverside Arts Center.
• Aug. 8, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
  Begin and end at the south entrance of the Brookfield Zoo, 3300 Golf Road in Brookfield
  Riders will dine at Vie, Zak’s Place, and Now Serving.
• Sept. 26, 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
  Begins and ends in Hinsdale at the Katherine Legge Memorial Lodge, 5901 S County Line Road in Hinsdale.
  Riders will dine at Absolutely Delicious, Ballydoyle Irish Pub, and the Daily Scoop.

Sign up for any or all of the rides today!

Active Transportation Alliance
9 West Hubbard Street, Suite 402
Chicago, IL 60654
P 312.427.3325 x288
F 312.427.4907

akane@activetrans.org

Bike Chicago’s living history at the 21^st Boulevard Lakefront Tour, Sept. 13. www.boulevardtour.org

Ride

The 2009 Boulevard Lakefront Tour features:

• A new, fourth route
• Event T-shirt
• Post-ride festival
• Optional picnic lunch (meat or veg)
• Volunteer support and five rest/water stops on the routes
• Ride guide with points of interest along the routes
• Scavenger hunt for raffle prizes
• Live entertainment at the post-ride festival

The Boulevard Lakefront Tour benefits the Active Transportation Alliance’s work to improve bicycling, walking and transit in Chicagoland. The ride takes place rain or shine; no refunds are available.

Choose one of FOUR routes:

• South Side Ramble – 15 miles
• Beverly Cruise – 27 miles
• Boulevard Tour – 35 miles
• Ultimate Neighborhood Ride – 62 miles

Festival

Join us after your ride for music, fun, food and beer! Don’t forget to stop by the Active Transportation Alliance tent!

Support

Rest and water stops will be evenly placed along the route to keep you going strong.

They will provide:

• Water
• Port-a-potties
• Food/treats (rest stops only)

Volunteer course marshals and ride marshals will be available to guide you and help out if you get a flat or need a quick bike adjustment.

Getting to the Boulevard Lakefront Tour

The Boulevard Lakefront Tour starts and finishes on the Midway Plaisance at the University of Chicago, just south of 59th St. and Woodlawn Ave.

By Bike

Exit the Lakefront Trail at the bike underpass at 55th and head west to Woodlawn. Take a left heading south to the Midway Plaisance.

From the west, ride east on Garfield into Washington Park and turn right on Morgan, following the flow of traffic around the park. At the fork where a small green sign directs to the right for Midway Plaisance, veer slightly right (Payne Drive) and then turn left from Payne onto South Midway Plaisance.

By CTA

With CTA’s Bike & Ride program, you can take your bike on trains and buses. The CTA will relax its two-bike-per-railcar restriction on the day of the BLT (exact hours are TBD). Be sure to visit www.transitchicago.com for official train and bus route start times.

From the Red Line, head south from downtown and exit at the Garfield station (5500 South).

Once you’re off the train on Garfield Boulevard, ride east into Washington Park and turn right on Morgan Drive, following the flow of traffic around the park. At the fork where a small green sign directs to the right for Midway Plaisance, veer slightly right (Payne Drive) and then turn left from Payne onto South Midway Plaisance.

(You can also use the East 63rd/Cottage Grove stop on the Green Line, but the Green Line trains may begin too late for your travel needs. If you do take the Green Line, don’t get off at King Drive/63rd—there’s no bike access at that station heading toward 63rd/Cottage Grove.)

In addition, you can take your bike on all CTA buses. The following routes will take you to and from a location near the BLT start/finish area: #4 Cottage Grove, #6 Jackson Park Express, #15 Jeffery Local, #28 Stony Island, #55 Garfield, #59 59th/61st. Please consult a map and call the number below with questions.

Go to www.transitchicago.com or call 1-800-YOUR-CTA for more information on CTA’s Bike & Ride program.

By Car

Lake Shore Drive:
Exit at 57th St. Take 57th west, which becomes southbound Cornell. Turn right on the Midway Plaisance, where a square green sign points right for “MIDWAY PLAISANCE WEST.” Continue to Woodlawn.

I-90/94:
Exit at 55th St. (Garfield). Go east on Garfield into Washington Park and turn right on Morgan, following the flow of traffic around the park. At the fork where a small green sign directs to the right for Midway Plaisance, veer slightly right (Payne Drive) and then turn left from Payne onto South Midway Plaisance.

There is typically free, on-street parking available in the area.

Well if so, this may be your last chance.  Due to some unforeseen health problems & leery of pushing the envelope after hopefully solving the problem, Jack & Pat Deacon will not be doing the View of Erie trip.

But before I cancel their reservations I thought I would once again offer the opportunity to the other members of CATS to see if their is anyone out there that might be interested.  At present we are ten teams now with one single rider & we have room reservation for all the nights for eleven couples.

If you take the trip, we will be leaving Ashtabula OH on July 26, 2009, riding NE into Erie PA for our first overnight.  The route for that day is along the Lake Erie coast, with a side trip if you wish out onto Presque Isle State Park, a peninsula that juts right out into the Lake.  There we will take a bike trail around the Isle.

Day 2 we continue along the shores of Lake Erie & into NY to the city of Dunkirk where our motel is right on the water front.  During the ride that day we will have the chance to visit wineries, ice cream shops, lighthouses, & still see part of the Lake as we ride.

Day #3 leaves from Dunkirk NY inland to Jamestown NY, the home of Lucile Ball & our motel for that night is a Best Western just blocks from the museum honoring her.

Day #4 heads back toward & into PA to Titusville & is reportedly one of our most scenic days of riding.  We stay in Titusville PA for two nights & our home there is the Caboose Motel.  Yep, real cabooses made into a motel & right at the start of a bike trailhead.

Day #5 is a rest day unless you want to take the above mentioned bike trail along the river south to the Drake Oil Museum & beyond.  It’s paved I’m told as far south as Petroleum City, about 10 miles, so you can do up to twenty miles or as little as you wish.

Day #6 we move on through Meadsville PA as we again get scenery as the main attraction & end up that day staying in Conneaut Lake.  This area was once a big amusement park area, which they are trying to once again make such a thing an attraction to the people in the area.

Day #7 we return to Ashtabula & our cars.
The milage’s for the days are as follows with the ones in ( ) being given for those that might want to ride farther on some days.  The only exception to this is Day #1 where the longer milage is what takes you out onto Presque Isle.  So here the miles are that are available to ride:

Day #1     54  miles (69)
Day #2     47
Day #3     34
Day #4     48              (59)
Day #5     49
Day #6 38 (46)

Total     270              304

So there you have it.  I must cancel the Deacons reservations by July 4, 2009 so we have just a little over a week to hopefully fill the vacancy. Are you interested but would like more information, then CALL TOM at 847-358-7797 (home) or 312-816-1720 (cell) ASAP.

P.S.  For those all ready signed up to go, I’ll be sending out a note in the next two weeks with everything you need to know, like the roster, motel names, rates, etc. so just be patient.   The routes are all done, we are just starting to review them for accuracy.

From: Tandemtom302@aol.com
Date: June 16, 2009 3:29:51 PM CDT
To: beezodog@gmail.com
Subject: No Subject

Hi Eric,     Could you post this for me.     Thanks Tom

2009 Annual Meeting

Since the annual meeting for 2009 was held in late April this year what fell from the sky was rain & not the usual CATS meeting day normal weather, read aa SNOW.
The meeting started close to the 2:30 pm time with loud & heartfelt thanks to Jim & Karen Click for once again offering the use of their home for our meeting.  It always amazing to me to see how we can squeeze in all the people who come & still find someplace to put the salad, deserts, beverages & the Pizza.  Thanks once again Jim & karen.
In attendance at this years meeting were the Masters, Camerons, Muellers, Prose, Fetzer, Dockstaders, Spears, Waterstreets, Kuehls, Kohls, Olsens.Prestons, Tom Ratajczak, Hoels, Tim Copse & Mary Devoto, Mckoys, Mays, Phil Gisi & Kathy Holloway, John Loesch, the Cohens & of course our host, Jim & Karen.
1.     The 08 meeting minutes were approved as published & the 08 financial report was also approved as published.
Tom M then thanked Carl Prose for picking up & doing the treasurers job while Tom was off in the southwest, including the posting of who had paid on the ‘blog’.
2.     Then we moved on the the 2009 budget.  Tom pointed out that this proposed budget was not current because when he worked it up & sent it out to be published the PSTR & MTR funds weren’t finalized due to checks not clearing.  Some other notes about the budget were as follows,
a. Due to the fact that we were going to receive some profit from MTR 08, it was decided to purchase some jerseys to fill in the empty sizes.  This jersey process was started in Nov. of 08 BUT wasn’t paid for until Feb. 09 because it takes that long to get the details finalized.
b. Neither the MTR 08 income OR the jersey purchase were in the original 2009 budget as published.
c.  From the money received from MTR 09, CATS will still owe someone a starter fund for MTR 2010 if in fact we find someone to host MTR 2010.  (Latest news regarding that is that Indiana is going to host & the Shipshawana IN area  (Northeast corner of IN)
d. No funds were set aside for a PSTR & no one has stepped forward to run it.
After some discussion, a motion was made to accept the adjusted budget for 2009.
3.     From there we moved on to discussion of LAB, LIB, the CBF, (now ATA which is Active Transportation Alliance) & our membership in each.  It was explained that LAB is where we get our club insurance from, dues are based on actual membership & that they pretty much represent us on a national basis.
LIB, (League of IL Bicyclists) does the same here in IL, promoting bicycling & stepping up for our rights.  They do a lot of lobbying in Springfield & have a number of projects going that are beneficial to bicyclist here in IL.
CBF, now ATA, was also very active in bicycling but now are expanding, as their name implies, to ALL areas of transportation, including walking, commuting,mass transit, etc. They seem to have lost their focus as regards bicycling & are now spreading themselves into many other areas. After much discussion regarding this the following motion was made:
That a letter be sent with no $$ enclosed to ATA explaining why we are choosing to not send $$.  Also to ask them to explain what they plan to do in 09-10 that will benefit bicyclist, & that reply will determine how much is sent next year.  Motion passed.
A motion was then passed to send LAB a flat $100 for our dues this year & to send LIB a flat $200 this year.
4.     It was noted that our insurance through LAB cost us $190.72 this year, total based on how many individuals members we have, is less then 08 because our membership is down.
5.     PSTR was then discussed.  There is to be NO PSTR this year.  The original goal of PSTR was to have it move around the state with other people outside of CATs hosting it. With a couple of exception, CATS members have mostly hosted the event & this year no one has stepped forward to host the event.  So it was decided that we would forgo the event this year & in future years unless someone notifies us that they want to host it. AT that point CATS will support it as we have in the past.
6.     The CATS TAILS, our newsletter was then discussed.  The current editor, Eric Vann wasn’t able to attend but wanted our suggestions and/or thoughts as to how it was working. The overriding opinion was that it was great & almost all were for the new format.  It’s a ‘blog” site, so we no longer publish an actual paper newsletter.  Sam Waterstreet pointed out that their are tutorials available on the web site on how to use the “blog” & that there is also a link to it.
It was pointed out that some members didn’t know how to get onto the members only section of our web site because they didn’t know the pass word.   So it was decided that a standard form would be prepared to acknowledge new members, give them the pass word, info on the “blog” & verify their email address.
7.     John Loesch then took the floor to talk about the Blind Stoker rides.   This starts the 12th year of the Blind Stoker rides.  6 rides were scheduled last year, weather canceled 3.
John mentioned that he always needs captains, & that if you don’t want to mess with your own bikes set up, that he has four tandems including a Co Motion Periscope that are bike path friendly, has pedals to swap for your bike if needed & that he also has helmets.
8.     Sam Waterstreet then spoke about the web site.  Has more links up on the home page, Yahoo group still up & running if people are interested.  To a question about when we need to pay fees for the domain, Sam replied that our site is backed by his & thus we have no fee.
9.     MTR 2008 was then discussed by Sam as well.  He felt that we organized it very well, had great volunteers, great facilities & that the kids program was a monster hit along with the “new attendees party”.  He pointed out that the vendor area was a surprise to him as after MTR 2007 he felt it might be dying, so gave Kudos to Frank & Sheila Mueller. He also thought that the seminars provided by Scott & Julie Duncan were well received & interesting & that the inviting of Bill McCready was a big plus.
Sam pointed out that we had a total of 108 volunteers, 80 of them CATS members, 7 other MTRS people & 21 from the Springfield bike club.  Our breakeven point was 400 teams, we had 437 & that all areas came in under budget, except for the banquet were we lost $13.00, due mostly to the screens for the DVR entertainment, & the jerseys also lost money because we didn’t sell as many as we thought we would.
The profits went in donations to our rest area & lunch stops, the police, organizations for bicycling, the Springfield club & jerseys for CATS.  We still owe 2010 MTR funds if & when a host steps up.  The remainder of the cash went into the CATS treasury.
10.     Old Business  –  Note on dues, if name wasn’t listed to see Carl Prose
11.     New Business  –  Several items came up for discussion
a.     If no one offers to host MTR 2010, would we consider holding a PSTR over Labor Day as a back up???    (It was suggested that we hold on this as the HOOTS were looking to do it NE Indiana)
b.     Two area that LIB had been actively involved in were a bridge over Higgens Rd. (next to I-290) in Busse Woods and an overpass in Woodridge over IL Rte.#53 to Connect with Lyle paths have been approved for funding.
c.     Date of 2010 annual meeting was then raised.   Question was rather to have it earlier in the year, without Tom as chair, or holding it in April again, only as early as possible. It was pointed out that Easter was the first weekend in April next year, but that the dates of April 10, 17 or 24 could be used.  The reasoning was that rides for April were not able to get listed nor were rides for May going to be published due to lateness of meeting.   Here is was pointed out that any rides that someone wanted to lead could be posted on the web site & the Blog & held before the meeting.  (Our insurance is in effect from Feb. 1 through Jan. 31. each year.
Tom noted that he would discuss this matter with the potential host (Clicks) as to dates & also with the potential new chair for that meeting.
d.     Tom then brought up the problem of shrinking membership.  Partly due to aging, physical problems, moving out of of state, lack of interest, etc.  Drop in membership was about 10 teams a year from our peak & this year projects out at about 20 to 25 teams.
One suggestion was to call all past members to see why they dropped out.  Tom pointed out that some people joined BUT never ever rode with the group & that seemed to be some of the people who didn’t renew.   Thinks it’s important that we encourage people to ride with us, once they do, we seem to keep them.
It was then suggested that we provide flyers for the bike shops that sell tandems so they could give anyone who purchased a new tandem one of our flyers in which we give the new tandem owners ONE (1) free year membership in CATS.  Entitling that team to full CATS benefits for the year.  This proposal was made into a motion & passed, with Barry Cohen stepping up to head the program, develop the flyer, etc.
e.     The last item under new business, was Ron & Marge Spears to discuss the future of the Wine Ride.& the need for it to have some changes in it’s format.  The Wineries in MI are now charging for their wine tasting, one where we used to eat lunch now prohibits food to be brought in unless you buy it from them, even Lemon Creek is now charging.  Apparently this is due to the misuse by people doing the wine trail, simply going from one winery to another, tasting but never buying & getting a cheap buzz on.
Ron & Marge were wondering if there would be objections to changing the format to something else.  If not then that would free up some new routes, maybe a new motel in a different area, maybe still hit one winery, & maybe come up with a new name as well.  It was pointed out that the Wine Ride started out in Niles MI originally, at that time visited only one winery, ate lunch there & returned to the motel in Niles.   Later it was moved to the New Buffalo area for awhile, expanded to two wineries, & eventually shifted north to its current site in Stevenville MI.  So NO, we have no objections as to a move, lets just have a nice ride & a great time.   Go for it Ron & Marge, we’re excited & looking forward to a new thing.
12.     With no other new business, we moved on to the ride schedule which has been published in the web site & blog all ready.
Once that was done, we were told the pizza had arrived & adjournment was immediate!!!!!!!

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