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Brooke Radding
12/19/2025 2:28 PM

I have a question for club members, ride leaders, and officers:


With all the great trails and routes in the Portland-Vancouver metro region and surrounding areas, why are the scheduled routes always the same few repeated rides? I am finding the them rather uninspiring after two or three times. There are so many untraveled routes we could be exploring. I don’t understand the need to stick to a few tired, old pathways. When I get a chance next year I plan to take the ride leader course through the Cascade Bicycle Club and offer some more adventurous, exploratory, creative rides than what is currently offered. In the meantime, I will explore unridden routes as a solitary rider.

—Brooke

Robert Stiner
12/19/2025 5:42 PM
Thanks for the update Brooke, I
can't  wate for the new routes to ride.
Bob Stiner 

Scott Storkel
12/20/2025 9:29 AM
Hi, Brooke -

The rides that are on the calendar are there because they're popular with ride leaders, popular with riders, and because they're (generally) safe. 

Let's not forget: our ride leaders have put 846 rides on the calendar so far this year for which we've had 4,977 registrations and our members have ridden almost 135,000 miles. Those numbers are very impressive given the relatively small size of our club, so clearly we're doing something right!

I think everyone would love to see new and more varied routes on the calendar regularly, but doing that is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. In particular:

- While riders say they want new, novel routes we've seen that attendance on new rides is very much hit or miss. Given the time it takes to map out new, safe routes I'm sure it's disappointing for ride leaders when only a handful of people (or less) show up to ride

- Creating new, safe routes has gotten more challenging as car traffic has increased dramatically over the last several years. Many of our members aren't interested in playing "road rage roulette" with cars, which may explain the lack of enthusiasm for new routes

- We need more people to volunteer to be ride leaders! 30% of our trained ride leaders have led 0 or 1 ride this year. As a result, our active ride leaders are working hard just to maintain our current schedule, let alone expanding it with new route options. Five people in our club (John Ost, Gus Harmon, Mike Detlef, Les Mischke, Sally Butts) are responsible for leading 50% of all rides on the calendar! 

One of the goals for our club in 2026 will likely be to get more ride leaders trained so we can expand the ride calendar! We'll add more explicit information to the website about the requirements for being a ride leader and make it more obvious who to contact in order to receive ride leader training. If you're interested in leading new and novel rides for the club, I would encourage you to volunteer to be a ride leader for the club! 


Scott Storkel
VBC Membership Director and
Webmaster


Brooke Radding
12/20/2025 10:27 AM
Scott—
Thank you for your thoughtful explanation and unbiased response and for recognizing that I was pointing out what I perceived to be a deficiency in the VBC program. As I said in my post, I am eyeing becoming a volunteer ride leader once I have received adequate training and feel qualified, as I also see the need for that. I look forward to continually improving my skills and being seen as an asset to the club. Perhaps the changes that you mention that are being considered will help attract new club members, “youngsters,” as one respondent called me, grow the club, and make VBC a more visible part of our community.
—Brooke
P.S. 75 years young! 😂😂😂 Riding again after a fifty-year lapse.

On Sat, Dec 20, 2025 at 12:29 PM Scott Storkel (sstorkel@gmail.com) <buddies@vbc-usa.com> wrote:
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Hi, Brooke -

The rides that are on the calendar are there because they're popular with ride leaders, popular with riders, and because they're (generally) safe. 

Let's not forget: our ride leaders have put 846 rides on the calendar so far this year for which we've had 4,977 registrations and our members have ridden almost 135,000 miles. Those numbers are very impressive given the relatively small size of our club, so clearly we're doing something right!

I think everyone would love to see new and more varied routes on the calendar regularly, but doing that is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. In particular:

- While riders say they want new, novel routes we've seen that attendance on new rides is very much hit or miss. Given the time it takes to map out new, safe routes I'm sure it's disappointing for ride leaders when only a handful of people (or less) show up to ride

- Creating new, safe routes has gotten more challenging as car traffic has increased dramatically over the last several years. Many of our members aren't interested in playing "road rage roulette" with cars, which may explain the lack of enthusiasm for new routes

- We need more people to volunteer to be ride leaders! 30% of our trained ride leaders have led 0 or 1 ride this year. As a result, our active ride leaders are working hard just to maintain our current schedule, let alone expanding it with new route options. Five people in our club (John Ost, Gus Harmon, Mike Detlef, Les Mischke, Sally Butts) are responsible for leading 50% of all rides on the calendar! 

One of the goals for our club in 2026 will likely be to get more ride leaders trained so we can expand the ride calendar! We'll add more explicit information to the website about the requirements for being a ride leader and make it more obvious who to contact in order to receive ride leader training. If you're interested in leading new and novel rides for the club, I would encourage you to volunteer to be a ride leader for the club! 


Scott Storkel
VBC Membership Director and
Webmaster


Christopher Brown
12/20/2025 10:55 AM
Scott,

Thank you for your well thought out email reply. As a ride leader this definitely rubbed me the wrong way! Being a ride leader is a huge responsibility! It takes a lot of time, energy and effort to pick a route out that is safe, put the rides together, and lead the ride while navigating through a growing population of careless and aggressive drivers. I for one have had no success designing my own ride due to the lack of cycling infrastructure and the ever growing population here in Clark County. I am super thankful for the rides available to us in the VBC library that our other wonderful volunteers have designed over the years.  While these rides may be "uninspiring" to some, a lot of us are all smiles and thankful to have such a great group of folks leading rides all throughout the week all year long. I hope to see more volunteers jump in and become ride leaders in 2026 and provide the club with some new routes.

Chris 

William Lide
12/20/2025 11:21 AM
Scott, your observations are right on target. It is extremely  hard to create new options outside of the clusters of ride options which occur naturally. 

Social groups drift over time toward two poles.  In our case, the popular rides may be described as “long and fast” and “short and slower.”  It’s hard to create new rides in between even if there are riders who would like to try “long and slow” or “short and fast.”  

After I learned this lesson from VBC, I realized we had the same issue within another VBC, namely the Vancouver Bridge Club. Our daily duplicate bridge games are mostly “long and fast-paced” or “short and slower” even though I’ve repeatedly tried as bridge club president to create options in between. 

It’s just the natural behavior of social groups. I applaud you and the ride leaders for keeping it vibrant. 

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