Our club has grown significantly in the past few years, both in numbers of members and financial support from community sponsors. This has allowed us to expand both our maintenance of mountain bike trails and expand work with youth. In April, about 150 children’s bikes were worked on by club members at Hallsburg School (east of Waco proper). This ongoing program, which involves about a dozen club members working over two evenings, is supported by purchasing $500 in parts and supplies.

We recently expanded our work with children to hold our first bike rodeo, on May 18, for students of JH Hines elementary school (grades 3-5). Thank you to the selfless volunteers who helped make our first bike rodeo with this school a success: Victor Pierce, Michael L Harris, Brenda Harris, Ashley Bean Thornton, Pam Hale Smith, Cecil Smith, Andrew Telep, Alice Svoboda, Marla Hendricks, Harry Thompson and Joseph Fraga. A lot of the heavy lifting to organize was done by Angela Ceccato, the dedicated after-school coordinator. Rusty Hansgen helped us organize all the spare parts we needed to work on bikes – tireless worker that one. Nancy Newman Goodnight gets a huge shout-out for connecting us with the McLennan County Medical Association, who donated 150 quality kids bike helmets! This was more helmets than needed for this rodeo so Dave Morrow took about 30 of them to Hallsburg School for their on-going cycling program.

Thanks to Dave Morrow for coordinating the bike rodeo.