Long story short: we are not restarting club rides yet and we will revisit the issue in six weeks.
After a long discussion the board came to a consensus that we were not comfortable with allowing club rides at this time. What led to that decision? Frankly it was a surprise to me because in the previous discussions there was a palpable feeling that we were open to the idea of having group rides again as long as the membership and ride leaders were comfortable with it, hence the poll on the website. In case you haven’t looked at the poll recently, over a third of the club responded and a little over half were inclined to attend a club ride, about a third weren’t, and rest were undecided. If that were representative of the whole club, I personally would have been in favor of allowing club rides all other things being equal because there was probably enough interest for small group rides (three or four participants). That said, personally I probably would not be leading rides at this point.
But in the past month the situation in the real world changed: the COVID-19 positivity rate started to inch up in the Bay Area, and as you know many other sections of the country including Southern California have seen alarming increases in infection, hospitalization, and ICU admissions. The Governor has put all Bay Area counties except San Mateo on alert because the numbers have not been going in the right direction. Face mask use has been inconsistent if not mostly absent. Counties have had to backtrack on reopening and there is even talk of going back to the initial lockdown to squelch the virus. So all other things are not equal after all!
When the board met again last week most of us now turned out to be more wary of restarting rides. Everyone on the board is a ride leader and obviously more involved and active than the “average” member yet we were feeling that now is not the right time to reopen. Most of us were also ambivalent or not enthusiastic about joining any group ride right now, club or otherwise.
So we decided to punt and wait roughly two more cycles of county health orders to see if the infection rates can be reduced or whether they’re still going to worsen. (County health departments generally wait two or three weeks to see how the rates respond to a new health order or alert.)
You might be wondering what other clubs are doing. Here in the Bay Area initially in March all clubs shut down their rides. Now about two-thirds of recreational cycling and racing clubs still do not allow group rides. The only clubs that currently allow outdoor group rides are Western Wheelers, Sunnyvale Cupertino Cycling Club, Santa Rosa Cycling Club, Benicia Cycling Club, Hercules Cycling Club, and Alto Velo Racing (in Santa Clara County). Western Wheelers now has club rides in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, their home turf, because those counties allow outdoor recreation of up to 50 and 60 participants respectively; Sunnyvale Cupertino CC has rides also in Santa Clara and San Mateo. Santa Rosa Cycling Club has rides in Sonoma where recreation businesses may do so after creating a COVID-19 compliance plan. Hercules and Benicia are two clubs that have just gone ahead with group rides despite their counties—Contra Costa and Solano respectively–not allowing group gatherings. Diablo Cyclists in Contra Costa County also seem to have group rides listed on their website but it’s not clear if those rides are actually taking place or not.
Here is the list of Bay Area clubs that do not allow group rides at this time: in the East Bay, Veloraptors (Oakland), Oakland Yellow Jackets, Cherry City Cyclists (Hayward) , Grizzly Peak Cyclists (Berkeley), Fremont Freewheelers, Berkeley Bicycle Club, and Valley Spokesmen (Dublin/Livermore); in the South Bay, Almaden Cycle Touring Club, San Jose Bicycle Club, and Velogirls; in the North Bay, Marin Cyclists; in the West Bay, Golden Gate Cyclists and Peninsula Velo. That said you would have to be blind not to see groups of cyclists, some in club kit, riding together. However they are doing it unofficially and not under the auspices of any club (not including the exceptions listed above).
Feedback from Western Wheelers and Santa Rosa Cycling Club has been that their members—since both clubs restrict their rides right now only to members—have been very good with social distancing and using face coverings on rides so far. According to our bylaws we cannot restrict club rides just to members, so we are not in a position to exert that much control over whom we allow to join club rides.
The Chain Letter 