Mt. Bike Skills Park/Pump Track
We made great progress on the pump track.  Many, many thanks to everyone who came out and helped out May 15th and 16th and those who donated equipment and tools for the work.  A few in particular that need a big pat on the back are Nathan Stephens, Jeffery Graham, Jason Broadaway, Nate Rice, Kacey Carter, Rusty Guinn, and Josh Olsen.  Although it's rideable now, the track needs some fine tuning and we still need to install some of the technical skill building obstacles, so we'll be scheduling another major work day soon.  Keep an eye out for an email about that in the near future.

CycleFest 2010
I can't say enough how amazing this event was!  On Bike to Work Day, we had roughly 40 folks riding through Jonesboro to downtown where we had one heck of a breakfast at Piero's.  The mayor announced that we will be represented on the newly formed Transportation Management Board (by yours truly).  We also trained 5 youth cycling instructors who are now certified by the League of American Bicyclists to teach bike safety and hold bike rodeos.  On Saturday, we taught kids and adults bike handling and safety skills for the road and trail, heard great tips for preventing injuries, taught lots of folks how to keep their bikes maintained and make minor repairs, and took lots of folks on their first group ride.  If you haven't seen the pictures, check them out on our website.  Big THANK YOUs are in order for our sponsors: Gearhead Outfitters, Jonesboro Orthopaedics Sports Medicine, St. Bernard's Sports Medicine, Arnold Real Estate, Piero's, Jonesboro Parks and Recreation, KUAT Racks, and Tifosi Optics. THANK YOU!!  I also want to thank the JPD for being amazing escorts on Friday, Brad Piercy for delivering Subway sandwiches to us on Saturday, and Tom Ezell for driving up from Little Rock to train our youth cycling instructors and teach on Saturday.  You guys rock!  I sincerely hope that everyone had as great a time as I did and that we continue this as an annual event!

Rack-n-Ride JTown
NEABC teamed up with JETS to create a "how-to" for using the bike racks that are on the front of all the JETS busses.  You can check that out on our website or on the JETS site.  These are great if you want to incorporate cycling into your commute, but maybe want to only bike part of it or if you find that the weather has taken a turn for the worse.  There are cities that have fought long battles for racks on busses, and we have them (thanks Gearhead!), so please go out and use them!

A Word from Your President:
One of my goals for this year is to become a little more organizationally sound.  One way to do that is to well, get more organized and to develop our membership program.  Last meeting, we discussed the purchase of a laptop to serve as a central location for our day to day business so that it can be passed along and shared as needed.  Scott Beasley was kind enough to help this Mac user shop for a PC :).   We also discussed looking into purchasing software for non-profits to help with membership development/management and accounting.  We just need to make sure our ducks are in a row so that we can be as efficient and sustainable as possible.

What we need from you all is to officially join us if you haven't.  Simple as that.  Having a strong paying membership base will help insure that we are sustainable as an organization and can continue our existing programs and expand our efforts to areas like offering more bicycle education, pursuing Bike Friendly City status in Jonesboro (or other NEA cities), providing more bicycle parking, and marketing and reaching out to other communities.  We also need something that comes so naturally to you all: your talents.  As we grow, the need for more volunteers also grows.  We have some amazing folks who have volunteered for various projects and your help is so greatly appreciated.  Some immediate needs that come to mind are folks who can help with marketing type projects or folks from other counties who would be willing to form a county specific task force or be liaisons with your county/city govt. (just as an example, Greene County) to help us expand our programs.  NEABC is gaining a lot of respect among the bike advocacy community for what we've accomplished in such a short amount of time, but there is so much more to do.  We need your support to make it happen!!  A family membership to NEABC is $20/yr., and to make joining easy we have a PayPal link on our website so you can even pay with a card (no need to have a PayPal acct.).  We also have membership forms at the bike shop in Gearhead.
Let me just say again how much I truly appreciate those of you who already volunteer and are members!

Next meeting: Tuesday June 15th, 6:00 PM at The Spot (above Piero's)