New England Mountain Bike Patrol Monthly Meeting Minutes May 8, 2007 NEMBA meeting report: - Trail maintenance course last weekend, 11 showed up. Terry went and said they did a great job. Friends of Fells guy showed up too, "seems to be friendly to us." - Rescheduled day at the Fells was a big success, 107 people signed in. - "Park Serve" weekend is this weekend. Fells is going to do a tree planting. Terry will be at GB with Philip and Tim Post. - Lots of trail maintenance days this year. In GB they're going to try to make it a joint effort between Greater Boston and Merrimack Valley. - Looking to make a Kid's Loop at the Fells. - Would like to have the patrol and other activity around Sheep Fold to help keep down illicit activity. - Want to make a small handicapped loop, like what they used to have at Harold Parker. - June 3 is National Trails Day. - June 28 (Thursday night), Will be a MassBike/NEMBA evening at a comedy club, 50% of proceeds go to NEMBA. Misc Patrol Stuff: - IMBA now requires? people to take a certification exam for the National patrol. Art took it, the rest of us hadn't. Clinic: - Clinic June 9 & 10 at Lynn Woods. Saturday is skills, history, procedures, and a ride. Sunday is CPR and First Aid. - Moving next month's meeting to a week earlier, June 5, so it's before the clinic. Want to try to get a nice central place (Lynn's house?) to get as much participation as possible. - 18-20 people have expressed interest. No idea how many will show up. A couple of interested people are already CPR certified. - Sam wants some help trying to get the form out of Publisher format. Jim is going to try to help do that. Want to mail the form to the interested people this week. - Might not be able to do re-certification during the event, depends on how many people show up. - Would like to spend more time on the bike stuff. Terry says: "Make sure they know how to fix chains." - Will be talking about park expansion at the clinic. We have approval for Wompatuck and Ames-Nowell, and we can do Vietnam. - Ranger (Stephan?) at Great Brook / Lowell-Dracut didn't even know about the Patrol. James is going to continue the conversation with him about it. - Sam is playing phone tag with Ray Fauscher, head of the Northeast Atlantic? area. - We are going to change the Patrol criteria regarding riding at parks; won't require all parks, removing 1hr Fells loop requirement. - Sam says he sent us out the new Patrol handbook for people to look at, but Jim can't find a record of it. - Terry moved that we need to get James another shirt in case his first one is dirty. - Someone needs to write an ad/announcement for the Clinic for NEMBA Website. Terry looked pensive, then agreed to do something. - Trying to get some blurbs on some other websites / forums (MassBike? Others?) - Need a few bike stands (Sam will bring one, Jim, James, Terry) Family Rides - Tim wants to do kid/family ride each month for June, July, Aug, Sept concurrent with new Kid's Loop at the Fells. Sam is going to get Jeanne in touch with Tim Post about that. - No word from HP regarding family rides, Jeanne is going to try to talk to Josie about that too. - Jeanne is coordinating them and will be looking for volunteers for ride leaders. Other events: - Invitation to patrol at Diesel Bikes Day. We're going to decline because NEMBA won't be there since they were not allowed to sign up people, sell anything, etc. (even though bike shops are allowed to sell things). - Blue Hills on May 20. - NembaFest at Wompatuck on September 8 and 9. - Wicked Ride on October 28. - NEMBA would like us to patrol all of their events, which are all over the place this year. More miscellaneous: - More talk about new tent. - Art: Any interest in the next level of first aid (first responder)? Total course time for course is 40 hours, can work on trying to split the time up so people can come. Probably would work best in the winter. - Art brought first aid stuff for resupply.