Look Back at October & November

The start of the winter training season continued to be quite busy with a lot of well attended Saturday morning training sessions.  October was fairly kind in terms of riding weather with 18 training sessions involving 16 Associates in all.  November, despite the weather turning a bit, was also busy with 21 training sessions involving 13 Associates.  Over the two months we welcomed another four new members, Stuart, Richard, Shaun and Steven.  There have also been several tri-annual renewals passed and we congratulate all those involved as always.

Two of the Saturday morning training sessions were cancelled due to the weather, and the indicated intended attendance for training.  We now have an agreed cancellation policy for weather conditions which will shortly be posted on the website.

The normal social calendar is put on hold throughout the winter period but there may well be some social rides organised if the weather is looking good, and there is sufficient interest.  Keep an eye out through the normal channels for information on these events as they will likely be advertised with relatively short notice.

All of those on the groups WhatsApp will have noticed that we have moved to a community group set up.  This was a previous suggestion and it was also noted that some WhatsApp posts were getting lost due to the high number of posts.  The ARNY Members Chat Area is the base community and we now have a Training group and a Social group.  We would ask that people try and be disciplined in posting in the right area to ensure their message does not get lost and is picked up by the right people.  There will also be specific groups set up from time to time, for events such as the current group relevant to those going to the ARNY Christmas event.  This change seems to have gone ahead without any major issues and will hopefully be beneficial to all.

We are also taking the opportunity through the winter period at looking at how we do some of the administration for the group.  This was an initiative that came out of the work led by committee member Paul Crane looking at the functioning of the group and where there are potential opportunities for improvement.  The current committee members split up the background administration needed to run the club.  Collectively it takes quite a lot of time and effort due to the processes and systems in use.  Paul has led a piece of work looking at available systems that could fit our needs.  We are now at the stage of looking at trialling a system that may be a good fit.  Fortunately, we have some members with experience of the trial system, in different environments, which will be a great help as we move forward.  We are aiming to keep any change as simple as possible but, if we do move ahead, it will have an impact on all members to some extent.  We will keep all members informed as we move forward and we are aiming to make any change as seamless as possible for all.        

November saw us have the first ARNY games night, organised and hosted by Phill Bates.  It became evident, fairly quickly, that the organisation must have included a free trial on the ice-free curling which Phill had obviously benefitted from!  Unsurprisingly the A2B team of Phill and Paul Batty came out overall winners and despite the underlying rumblings of a fix it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening for all.  We all hope there will be a chance to get the trophy from Phill and Paul next year.

The last social event for 2025 will be the ARNY Christmas meal at Ambiente Tapas in Fossgate, York on Sat December 13^th which has been well supported and will no doubt be a great way to celebrate and look back at another very busy year at ARNY.

As always training will continue through December and into the new year for all those who are interested in coming along.

Until next time…..