ThNR

Spring weather in Manitoba is weird.

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

See you at 8.

ABES Bulletin

The ABES Winter Bike Festival was sweet.  Highlights included: a family ride with 30+ people cycling around town enjoying the good life, Coen forgetting that he shouldn’t walk through mud, a photo finish sprint at the last-man-out race where Paul held off Evan, Dan K and Shaun winning the relay race, t-shirt weather at a winter bike event, Maxine helping alleviate the parents guilt by being our babysitter, Steven debuting his beautiful carbon Cannondale 29’er, Bruce generously donating a box of bike goodies, and enjoying pizza, chips and beer at the sExchange with great people.  Good times y’all.  David took these pics...

If you want to take part in the no-stake action of the March Madness basketball tourney, you can! DSwank has set up an account so we can compete against each other (the password is Altona2015).  Fill in your picks (guesses) and let the computerizor do the rest - easy-peasy-Japanesey.  The more the madness-ier.  Bragging rights hang in the balance.  According to some dude, the odds of you filling out a perfect bracket are a staggering 1 in 9.2 quintillion. That's a nine with 18 zeroes or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 if you're not into the whole brevity thing.  The 1 in 9.2 quintillion number is straight mathematics - it figures out how many possible ways the 63 game results on your bracket could be filled out (two to the sixty-third power), but it doesn't account for standard basketball logic, like No. 1 seeds have always advanced in the first round or tournament champions usually having a top-four seed or Duke's dual advantage of having a legend like Coach K and never getting called for a blocking foul. If you know something about the NCAA tournament, the odds of a perfect bracket are more like 1 in 128 billion.   It should be easy for me because I watched the Harlem Globetrotters play against a team of robots on Gilligan’s Island.  True story.

Breaking news - The MCA offers registered bike clubs an opportunity to do fundraising and I jumped at the chance.  We need 5 volunteers for Friday, May 22 to be at the McPhillips Street Station from 6:00 – 9:45 to assist with selling bingo cards or pull-tab tickets or something like that.  The evening will net our club some easy money but David and Franklin guaranteed to double it playing Smash the Pig.  Check your schedules and let me know if you can help the team. 

Interesting bike idears...

ThNR Report

Jonny, Shaun, Steven and I met to ride on a beautiful, warm, March night.  We headed off to find David and then went to pick up our dry cleaning.  After a bit of riding we ended up at the creek and sat in the quiet low rumble of Bunge and enjoyed the end of winter and the stillness of the water.  We resumed our ride and finished at the clubhouse where we were met by Albert, (who wasn’t curling) Duker, Lyle and Lorne.  The minutes included: Olaf is a snowman and Oleg is a drunkman, the ABES have been officially invited to the Okanagan and are definitely going to go, MCI, glasses vs reading glasses vs laser eye surgery vs contacts vs bifocals, and this year’s winter bike fest is going to be the warmest ever.  This is the second week in a month where I participated in or overheard a reading glasses conversation at the ABES table, just saying.

We ended the night with a cultural and personal examination of the role of bikes, church, community and ABES in our lives.  “Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.” Stephen Leacock

This Sunday is the Winter Bike Fest.  Come out for bikes, in a church, community and ABES at 2:30 and live a little!  See the posts below for more info.

Cheers,

Franklin

ABES Bulletin

ABES Winter Bike Festival - This Sunday at The sExchange – coffee and yarba will be served at 2:30.  We’ll begin with a family bike ride so everybody can enjoy their bikes, then proceed with the rest of our day.  Maxine Penner has agreed to tend the tots while we gallivant.  The forecast is for 15 degrees so it should be the warmest winter bike fest weather ever!

Random act of pastor Dan - President and lone member of the Bring Back The Moose Club, Dan will have his wish come true as the "much anticipated" return of the Manitoba Moose 2.0 seems to be a reality.  Why do good things happen to bad people?

Random Files...I love watching great soccer goals, but great soccer saves are even better.  Check it out If you like cool stuff.

Thursday Night Ride - On.

ABES Winter Bike Festival

The AWBF plan is to meet this Sunday at The (s)Exchange at 2:30 for a pre-ride coffee, hot chocolate or wobbly pop, casually ride around town in a big, beautiful group, enjoy a two-person relay race at the park, high-five our efforts then return to the (s)exchange for supper.

This time of year the weather can vary from balmy to blustery.  Environment Canada is calling for a high of 14 for Sunday - we’ll see.  Cycling on the ice rinks/pond could be sketchy, we’ll probably all have mucky bike butts after our ride, and the chances of hypothermia will be minimal barring a polar bear swim at the pond.  Technically it’s still winter so it’s on with the show…

Kids can stay at the exchange to watch a movie if they prefer.  A babysitter or willing adult is needed to tend the tots - anyone…anyone?

Price of admission is a salad or dessert or bags of chips to share.  Pizza will be sold by the slice.  byob.  Everyone is invited to this family friendly event.  JS

ABES Bulletin

so many great faces in this picture

Quiz Night takes place this Friday and there will be 28'ish teams trying to take down the smrtest bike club in Altona as we defend our title.  We'll throw our collective kanowledge against the wall to see if it'll be good enough for the win...even if it's only by 3.

Save the date: the ABES Winter Bike Festival will take place on Sunday, March 15.  Ride, race, beer, pizza, good times.  The more the merrier - stay tuned.

In case you were wondering...Here’s a Spring Classics guide for dummies  

Better late than never?  Thursday night ride is on of course.  Prepare to endure Dan gloating about his Sens.  Boo-urns.

this did/did not happen.
oops.

See you at 8.